Remember the old movies where the family gathered around the person in crisis, suffering high fever and approaching death? Usually there was a happy ending when the fever “broke” and the patient recovered.
Crisis: I’ve lived through so many in my lifetime. Oh, I’m not referring to pneumonia, or even personal crises. I’m referring to national and international crises. Like waiting in the New Haven, Connecticut railroad station for my boyfriend to meet me. My thoughts? We’ll never get married. I’ll never get to graduate school. We’ll all die when the atomic bomb drops on us. No, the 1950s were not a calm, peaceful time.
Korea: My boyfriend (a different one) sent letters home as he served in the “action” that never was officially a war. Always, at least once in a letter, he’d say, “Christ, we’ll all be killed.” It was a kind of mantra, I think, to ward off death.
The Cuban missile crisis. Now I had children for whose safety I feared. Sleepless nights of worry, even though I knew my worry had no power to stop “it.” – whatever “it” might turn out to be.
The 60s – Oh, the 60s. Now I look back and see the amazing changes that have happened – and the ones that haven’t. This could be a whole long blog all by itself recounting the changes in women’s lives, for example. (A subject on which I have more authority to speak than on racial changes.) Women lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, mail carriers, news reporters, commercial pilots, fire-fighters. police officers, – even chiefs of police. Women still earning less than men for jobs of equal value — not as far behind as they used to be. But I’ll save all that for another time.
The Iraq thing: Definitely kept me awake, watching powerless as that terrible period developed leaving behind an aftermath for which decades will find us paying the price.
OK. You get the idea. Now, of course, we are in another crisis. No – make that plural — crises. Technical advances changing the way we make a living – or don’t. “Global Weirding” and the related rejection of science. The rush to violence and the growing reactions against it.
I feel like I’m living in a maelstrom. And I feel like I’ve felt like this before. And I know that while I’m/we’re in it, we’re too close to see the effect it’s having on our evolution as a people, a nation, and a world. Even as a universe.
So, what’s this all about? I have learned to wait and see. Do what I can. Act as I believe is right and moral – knowing that some people think I’ve “got” it, and others believe I’m way off the mark – and that none of us individually has much power to stem the tide. But watching in awe as public opinion is making itself known. Ten years from now, maybe less, where we are heading will make sense in retrospect.
Someday the fever will break. The patient won’t die, but things will never be the same as they were. Change will happen, maybe for the better in the long run. And maybe more quickly than we expect. Just look at what’s happened to gay marriage. Maybe even our current rush to violence will “break” as more peaceful solutions prevail.
In the meantime, I’ll listen to music sometimes, instead of watching the daily din of news which will, of course, be bad, because the good stuff doesn’t make news. I’ll assume I and my world will be around long enough for “Mrs. Job” to find a new home and a new name, and even begin to make some money again.
And I’ll read the good news in my two favorite “positive-focusing” magazines: YES and ODE And wait for the day when the news media will be presenting some good news in spite of themselves.
monagustafsonaffinito 