Geezers, pass it on!

I get it now! I understand why old folks like to wallop the youngin's with tales from ancient times, like 40 years ago, before the world was really even settled yet and they didn't have modern inventions. So you better sit down for a minute, because I'm about to launch....

Once upon a time it was the 1960s. What just popped into your head? Love beads and hippies? Strike that. Love, peace and LSD? Strike that, too. I'm not saying they didn't happen, just that tv and movies have romanticised and mythologized that part of the culture, just as they have the WWII 40s and the flapper 20s and the big daddy of them all, the Civil War ----- (or the Late Unpleasantness, as we say in the south).

Back to the 1960s. There was a war going on, with several fronts. One was in the streets and backroads of the south, as Americans who were the descendents of enslaved people rose up and claimed full citizenship. That's not how it was perceived by many people at the time, by the way.

Another front was the aforementioned Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll uprising. It was fought in large part within the confines of living rooms and basement rec rooms, as well as on college campuses, being essentially a generational battle.

Then there was Viet Nam. As the leading edge of the post-war baby boom generation became draft age, more and more were being plucked out of the herd and deposited in the jungle to fight a war with real bullets, the kind where very young men, boys really, die.

Coming as it did after more than a decade of what appeared, on the surface, to be peace and prosperity (shhh, cold wars don't count, just go play outside and let the grown-ups take care of everything) the unrest that popped up everywhere at once, it seemed, was divisive, disorienting, and entirely uncalled for in the eyes of the powers-that-be. After all, wasn't the US of A the greatest country in the world? Hadn't we just proved it by beating the hell out of all the bad guys on the planet and setting off the most awesome explosions known to man?

Whenever I hear people talk about the Culture War, I have to think back to those days. People weren't just shouting across a divide, they were killing each other in the streets. The national guard was marching on campuses and actually shooting students. Dead. Forever.

It is not that I think this recent election was not important, or that the issues being raised now are of less consequence than those from 50 years ago or 150 years ago. Each generation has to find its own way, and it always involves pitting new ideas against the old. It is axiomatic that young people view the world differently than their elders, and that older generations see the young as too inexperienced to understand the complexities before them.

Personally, I take comfort from reading history. Cultural changes occur regularly, cyclically, along with everything else. Guess what, old folks, we're gonna die first and leave everything to the youngsters. And they will be fine, or as fine as anybody ever is. They may even do a better job than we have ---- I tend to think that's true.

And it happens just in time. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm starting to get tired. My body is not what it used to be and my phone is way smarter than I am, which drives me crazy. The banner is getting heavy. Marching in the streets doesn't hold the allure it once did. Sometimes, I'd just rather meditate about it, sit on my deck and relish the wonders of nature, feel my rootedness to the earth and experiment with the idea that someday it will all go on without me. What happens when all the baby boomers are too pooped to move off the deck, huh? It sure doesn't mean that the world will stop turning. It might just mean it's a new day. And there's nothing wrong with that.