What happened to my generation

 

December 20, 1985  (I was 41) 

 

                  What happened to my generation

         The generation waited. It was very easy.  It was a time

when it was the generation’s turn to wait.  Patience was easy,

mere existence was a recent awareness.  Judgments were

made and reserved.  First visions are clear.  There is no subtlety

to them, no complexity.  If something is not right, it’s wrong.

         Judgment leads to conviction.  Affirmation by the

precocious multitude creates righteousness, invokes the courage

to express conviction.  Let others call it audacity, we called it

vision.  Let others murmur presumption as long as they moved

aside.  The generation would roll over time, predicting and

planning our own obvious evolution.  The ride was inevitable,

it would be prudent to hold on.

         The errors of the past were easily forgiven, those times

were primitive.  We believed any remnant of ignorance would

surely fall before educating logic.  Loving parents were not

fools, they were only preoccupied with domestic triviality.  They

always talked of a better life.  They had fought each other to

make the world safe for it. 

         So it was that the naïve were dismayed by the resistance.

The determined youth were disillusioned by the tenacity of the

resistors.  The young complacent were sent to fight an invented

war, and the fanatics were killed or sent to jail.  The other

generation was not done yet.  Those in power had done what

they needed to get it.  They knew selfish greed and would not

relinquish their desires for those to someone else.  Their

advantage, in fact, was their ability to recognize the other. 

They knew what it really was no matter the idealist tags

attached.  They bought used innocence before and knew it

was a bargain whatever the price.  The foolish sellers tried to

hide shrewd smiles.  Ironic that something which could not be

bought could never again be owned once it was sold. After

snickering about what happened to others for twenty years,

my generation got lost in the commute traffic.  On the way

it thinks about the work it gets paid for today. On the reverse

trip it thinks about the work it will be paid for tomorrow.  Not

that it likes the work all that much.  No work paid for is needed

all that much, that’s why someone must be paid to do it. 

         In the end I suppose attrition seemed so civilized. 

Minute changes within the system, quality time with the kids,

skiing vacations, paid benefits and decent suits became the

things the generation did while it waited.  And while it waits

another generation with nothing to do, cut its hair because it

looks so radical, rather than cutting our throats.