Where have we been over the last 50+ years of my existence? Born in 1953, I've seen what I think is everything but of course the longer you're around, the more you see that anything can and will happen. The baby boomers chronology has long been hashed and rehashed, all the major events displayed, talked about ad nauseam, the assassinations of the Kennedys, MLK, the moonwalk, Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate, Reagan, the Beatles, right up to 9/11 and beyond. But something has happened to us as a nation, a tribe that makes everyone here wonder what's up with this generation that the Who so aptly wrote. Heck, they weren't even an American band and caught a glimpse of what we are all about. It started probably about when the Kennedy assassination took place. We lost something there, a moral guide, a conscience that pointed us in a direction of one mind, one spirit, one nation under God. We felt our leaders were in control, they had our backs, watched out for us and we could depend on them.
Of course, we were all getting older so our consciences were forming and our destiny was also taking shape. So much upheaval was occurring something had to give. The generations preceding ours were pretty much of the rank and file, taking orders always doing what was required of them and taking care of business. This method was definitely productive as the single most powerful country in the history of the planet was created by sheer will and determination to achieve by a conglomeration of human beings forging out a new and progressive way to prosperity. Here, on what could easily be referred to as our little island we sit, protected by water on both sides which of course has always separated us while the rest of the savage world around us take liberties upon each other, often making it easy to take the non involvement approach to governing and world presence. We love our little paradise flush with resources which seem endless and take our pleasures as they can be found. We, as a generation have had to move past the old way of thinking, just do as you're told and all the pieces of the puzzle will fit into place. Many of the preceding generation had to quit work just to help support the family.
Not many boomers have had to forgo their educations to swallow that one, but it left many a WWII vet that much harder of a worker, constantly pouring millions into an economy exploding well into the late 60's only to fall flat in the face of Jimmy Carter and take him out along with the Iranian hostage crisis. We however were the ultimate warriors of change, defiant and rebellious when faced with the ultimate reflection of human cruelty, war and especially a war that made no sense to our collective minds, we finally had the power to influence national behavior, we forced an end to the insanity.
It was easy to rail against the lunacy when your butt was on the line, because our freedom, especially personal is what we value most. Look at our road structure, we can go anywhere just by hopping into the car and take off sending ourselves away to anywhere or nowhere, whichever is desired at the time. We can run to anything or away from everything, ghosts that haunt us or demons that attack us. We can run to security, maybe our family, maybe someone we want to make our family. Maybe go see an old friend. We can jump on a plane to wherever and in a matter of hours, see new vistas we've never seen, experience things never felt, go to Vegas, L.A., N.Y. or any spot in between. It's become relatively cheap to do, especially after the airlines became deregulated. Competition is the key, the big guys will fall once a small guy figures out a better way. We enjoy the competition, don't we? It's made every conceivable luxury available to us and advertisers pander to our every whim trying to sell on the “big easy”, how can we make it better for ourselves and our kids? It's always the big question for this boomer mentality we've settled into on our island paradise.
What is odd about the history of our country almost no one has had it easy, it's always been a struggle. In order to build something as hugely successful as now exists here could only gargantuan effort by mass quantities of individuals, which really happens to consist of immigrants coming in droves one generation after another facing pile of hardships one after another. The sum total of their efforts have created the comfort of the nation we have today.
