It’s Always the Worst of Times
Even When It’s the Best of Times
An Old Lady’s Deep Thoughts #1.
Sometimes, thoughts go through my head at the strangest times. Often, I don’t even know what triggered them. Maybe I have too much free time. Perhaps I’m getting old and becoming more self-aware. Who knows. This short piece, I hope, will be the first of a series of deep but often fleeting thoughts that I’m going to try to share with my readers. Feel free to tell me what you think.
Here’s today’s deep thought.
People seem shocked that this political season is so nasty. Did they think that racism, bigotry, sexism, and xenophobia had been wiped out until recently?
Were they operating under the delusion that, for the past decades, our country had been a shining example to the rest of the world?
I guess they aren’t old enough to remember the turbulent 60s, the horrible and unwarranted Vietnam War, the end of production in the US and the beginning of large-scale outsourcing, police violence on campuses, the Civil Rights movement, Freedom Riders, or lynchings of Black Americans in the deep south.
We expect no one living today to remember that our country was built on the backs of slaves and indentured servitude. Nor is it convenient to remember that we acquired the very land wherein we take such pride in ownership through violence and genocide of the indigenous population.
Of course, they don’t remember. Not really.
They can’t even remember the crash in 2008 with clarity, the needless war in Iraq, and the greed that brought both to pass. Alas, our memories are easily clouded and distorted. That’s what the old proverb — the sins of the father shall be visited upon the heads of their children — really means. We inherit their worldview and think it’s normal.
How easily we perpetuate the same evil, making careless choices all over again.
Everything has changed but nothing has changed. It has always been the worst of times. It has always been the best of times. We pass the baton to the next generation and even though they vowed to do it better than we did, they often repeat a new version of the problem or create a brand new one.
If only we could remember. If only!
Maybe we could learn from our past. Wouldn’t that be something? But we can’t. We’re alive and can barely remember what took place in our own lives let alone what took place in our parent’s or grandparent’s lives. We are so bloody insignificant that no sooner do we die we’re forgotten by our descendants. They say by the third generation we’ve largely disappeared. Our children bury us and never know what went on in our minds, the things that kept us up at night, our dreams, our innermost desires.
Somehow, we seem to believe that all the past ugliness has nothing to do with our current collective values and internal struggles.
A worldview is handed down from one generation to the next. And we do indeed inherit the messes of previous generations. All of it — our ugly and dark history up to the present — has been mixed together to form a concoction that bubbles and simmers on the back burner of our collective consciousness like an unsavory soup. Add a little pinch of nastiness and it immediately comes to a rolling boil before we know it.
Yet, once again, we’re caught off guard. We’re shocked and appalled that this political season is so damn nasty.
— Tell me your thoughts.
Teresa is an author and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
