Talking 'Bout My Generation

This morning, I was thinking about our current society, the world as it is, and wondering if this generation is more violent than previous ones. Turn on the news and you’ll hear about a shooting, a bank or gas station robbery, some nut who kills their children or an entire family, or a drug deal gone wrong. And that’s just local news. Across the country, we’re dealing with escalating gang violence, problems arising from our influx of illegal aliens, and domestic terrorism. Around the world, Africa, North Korea, and the entire Middle East region are festering.

So I started thinking. 9/11 shook this generation’s boots. Literally. That, to date, was our defining moment for anyone born in the early 90s or earlier. That is this generation’s version of “where were you when Kennedy was shot?” Anyone 23 years old or older today will likely remember that pretty, fall Tuesday when our world changed. Our security blanket, well-worn yet still intact, was eaten by the washing machine of evil. Our lives changed. Our innocence was lost. We had known of terrorism, but it was something across two oceans and stored safely halfway around the world. Not before nor since Pearl Harbor had the enemy dared walk into our yard.

There were immediate and long-lasting developments that impacted the way we live and travel. No longer does your family send you off and greet you at the boarding gate. Now you cattle call your way through security checkpoints, showing your paperwork to anyone in a uniform, and watching a wide swath of society – young, old, male, female, foreign, domestic, Hasidic Jew and weird punk rock dude with a mohawk – in various stages of dress and undress. We have scanners now that provide security personnel a most intimate look inside you to see if you’re hiding a weapon (or thinking about passing gas). And, less notably, almost all friendliness has been replaced with scrutiny and suspicion. Now airport, airline, and security personnel are constantly scanning the crowd. Fellow passengers size one another up while waiting, performing their own version of profiling. That idyllic image of a 1950s stewardess, charming and witty like a 30,000-ft geisha, has been replaced by a more uncharismatic, androgenous version…one who will throw a flat Coke at you only to come by 20 seconds later with a trash bag and is constantly sending the vibe “act up, and I’ll tase your [bottom].”

Then I think about my parents’ generation and how unsettled they must have felt at times. They are old enough to have heard first hand accounts from WWII around the Thanksgiving table. And they lived through the Cold War, Korea, Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam, and the oil and energy crises.

And my grandparents? Well, they endured Prohibition, the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and WWII.

So I suppose every generation has its conflicts and its unrest. What makes us great – as individuals and surely as Americans – is our resolve. Our dedication to a better life. Isn’t that what got us started in the first place. A commitment to do what’s right, always. To put others first. To enjoy freedoms but to know that one’s rights end where another’s begin.