A year later - still spinning our wheels

Once again I have returned to an earlier post, focusing on this new and different world that has me scratching my head. Will this rant of mine change the course of what I fear is our descent? Not likely. Still, there are some things I need to get off my chest before I choke on them.

It was exactly a year ago, as we awaited the beginning of a new presidency, when I first posted my unsettled concerns on these pages. Sad to say, little has happened in the ensuing year---with its party-bound politics, lack of civility, and the apparent demise of everyday truth---to soften my grim uneasiness. 

True, the new tax measures promise to spur the economy. That can’t be bad---though the full price of that windfall remains to be measured and paid. The economy, however, was the least of my worries a year ago, and remains so today.

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As you might expect, over the years I’ve had a few folks take exception with my depiction of our 60s and 70s as “only” October. So far no one has argued for “September,” but quite a few of you have suggested a later month. 

Having recently crossed into my eighty-first year, these days “November” better describes my mood and physical capabilities. Heck, I’ve probably dipped a toe in “December” a time or two. So it was, a while back, that I stepped forward to add “and November too” to the blog’s title.

But of course my use of “October” was never meant to be simply about age. It also denotes a state of mind. More to the point, like the month of October on a calendar, our October and November Years are times of harvest---times to gather the fruits (Some of them dried and withered) of the seeds we’ve sown in the course of a lifetime and the things we’ve learned along the way. I happen to believe that even in these late-life years there are ways we can put that experience of ours to good use.

        I will admit that one of the risks I faced in telling the October stories I told was the temptation to dwell on the maudlin---stressing the negatives and hardships of late life. Of course, by this stage of the game we’ve had our share of bumpy roads and unexpected detours. And there will be more of those. If we’ve been paying attention at all we should expect that. 

But today I am prompted to move beyond those individual circumstances to address something I find even more upsetting ---something for which my personal life journey and the life views I have accumulated along the way have not adequately prepared me to deal with.

You see, if you are my age, odds are infirmity and distress have been part of your personal experience. Most of us have learned to accept that. Yet it seems that every day this November mind of mine struggles to make sense of a more sinister form of reality---the cultural infirmity and divisive distress that plague our society. 

What I perceive as the chaotic unraveling of our national persona has me wondering how much I overlooked as a younger person. Have things always been like this? Was I just too blind to notice? Have we as a  nation been lulled into complacency by decades of relatively-civilized peace? Are we simply experiencing a regression to the human norm, or has there been a fundamental change in the path of social evolution---a new “human norm” being created before our eyes?

How else would you interpret the headlines that assault our sensibilities daily? On the local level it feels like every morning’s newspaper and every evening’s newscast provides new evidence of predators and perverts, addicts and con-men, not to mention politicians gone amuck. Have we simply become accepting of an unprecedented scale of violence and mayhem? 

Have we grown so numb that we look right past the all-too-obvious warning signs---middle-school girls being bullied to death---wide-eyed young men unleashing their lethal revenge in our high schools---an ever-increasing number of us, young and old, dependent on mind-altering pharmaceuticals? There are times when it feels like our beloved nation is drowning in a tsunami of insanity.

And while our towns and neighborhoods struggle to stay afloat, our national political dysfunction continues to stir the flames of discord. Finger pointing and blame have displaced bipartisan problem solving. In a world of spiteful politics and crushing, always mounting debt, most of which will never be repaid, I fear the great majority of us are being hung out to dry. 

Meanwhile the Wall Street and Washington vultures slowly circle, fighting to get an even larger piece of the pie before it vanishes into the economic quicksand. The supposedly “drained swamp” still hides menacing creatures, and smells as bad as ever.

Surely I am not the only one who wonders what has happened to the world we knew. It becomes harder and harder to recognize the country where I grew up and perhaps thought I understood. Small wonder the October characters I wrote about were apt to stumble as they tried to make sense of it.

Again, my question is simple enough. Has it always been like this? We may have grown up hearing our parents and grand-parents grumble about “the younger generation,” and how things were not this bad in “the good old days.” Sometimes they even hinted of ancient cultures where age was venerated, and equated with wisdom. Truth to tell, I’m getting old, but the wisdom and understanding I had hoped to gain seem to have eluded me.

So, are today’s headlines just more of the same? Did the world of our childhood and adolescence always include the troubles we read about now and watch on the tube? And if it did, is it the scale and frequency of those problems that has changed---or is our increased awareness simply a matter of more thorough and divisive reporting, better police work, and cameras on every street corner? 

Whether or not our generation is dealing with something new and different, I have no doubt that for many of us, this crazy new world impacts our ability to “thrive in our 60s and 70s.” If so, I’d say that makes it an October issue.

I would appreciate your help here, your input. If you wish, I hope you'll pass this on to your October  and November friends. (The email link below is easy to use.) As always I'd be interested in hearing your input via “Reply.” (below) 

With that, I will try to calm down a bit in time for the next post. (Who hid the scotch?)