I know a lot of us are having a hard time. Some of us are scared, with justificiation, about what we will be facing in the coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d like to roll the clock back to the mid 1980s for a minute. I was a teenager and had become convinced, as did many people of my age, that we would die in a nuclear firestorm before we were thirty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had justification for this. Read the news from the time. Listen to speeches by politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more than that, listen to the music:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s just off the top of my head nearly 40 years later, but it was the background noise of my youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn’t particularly believe I would have an adulthood. I lived between the US national capital, a state capital and well over a dozen military bases. I figured I’d probably die in a nuclear firestorm, so having a future? Feh. It was unlikely I would have one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To this day, conceptualizing a future, working towards it, and actually believing in it is hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could have had a degree paid for by Mom and Dad. Did I? Nope. There were lots of reasons, but I won’t say that beliving in the back of my mind that a degree or a career was a pointless waste of my very limited time was part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was nearly 21 when the Berlin Wall came down. I had started thinking about Christmas shopping, and I was sitting in the local mall parking lot listening to the news on my radio rather stunned. I realized I didn’t know how to have a future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m still not good at it and I won’t say I don’t have my Denthor days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Y’all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe we don’t have a future, sure enough, but…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You gotta pretend. Grow a plant. Plan something for a year from now that will take some time to work on between now and then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe the future really is a lie, but…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You know how in Hogfather where Death talks about having to practice with the little lies like the Tooth Fairy and the Hogfather as a child, so that when you are a grownup, you can commit to the big ones — Justice… Mercy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I know a lot of us are having a hard time. Some of us are scared, with justificiation, about what we will be facing in the coming years. I’d like to roll the clock back to the mid 1980s for a minute. I was a teenager and had become convinced, as did many people of … <\/p>\n