“May you live in interesting times.”
— Author and origin unknown
Coming of age in the humdrum 1980s, when “Dynasty” passed for social commentary and Hands Across America was our idea of a revolution, I was fascinated by the turbulent 1960s.
Now those were interesting times.
I absorbed every page of the tall, hardbound Time-Life book, “The Sixties,” in my grandparents’ basement. The Kennedys. Assassinations. MLK. LBJ. Vietnam. The Beatles. Riots. Love-ins. Racial strife. Hippies.
What must it have been like, I thought, to live through those times?
Even in the 1970s, when Vietnam was at its peak, and Watergate and gas lines caused folks to grumble, my world was far removed from the pages of that book — insulated by the green grasses of the suburbs and inoculated by the short-lived innocence of youth.
May you live in interesting times.
What I once thought was some sort of Chinese blessing, I’ve since found can be, quite literally, a curse. Who knew how blessed we were to live in uninteresting times?
Remember the 1990s, when our nation’s biggest concern was whether Tonya knee-capped Nancy or whether our zipper-challenged president understood what the definition of “is” is?
At work, tough decisions went something like this: Do I stay where I’m comfortable, or do I take the leap and make big bucks at some burgeoning dot-com or tech company?
Al Gore already had invented the Internet, and sure it was still dial-up and slow, but it was worth the wait just to hear that computerized “You’ve Got Mail” guy. It opened up never-before-seen worlds to anyone with a computer modem.
Wallets were thick with credit cards, and fiscal responsibility was someone else’s problem.
It was a time of, mostly, global peace. The Cold War was over. The Persian Gulf War was over before the first television commercial break. Speaking of TV, we had “Friends” and “Seinfeld” and Must-See TV in the 1990s.
Now, instead of witty writing and good acting we have the faux drama of reality TV — at a time when our reality is more dramatic than anything they could cook up for TV.
In the span of nine years, the global housing bubble has burst and we’ve endured two recessions, including this one, which is the worst in decades.
We’ve watched as job losses mount. General Motors, once the pride of the country and a catalyst for the “American Century,” has devolved into Government Motors.
Deficits are rising. Iran wants the bomb, and Pakistan, which already has it, is on the verge of collapse. We’ve endured the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and are still fighting two costly and deadly wars. Now, swine flu and stories of pandemics gone by fill the 24-hour news cycle.
I’m tired of living in interesting times. You don’t have to be a hippie to suddenly miss the turbulent ’60s.
I try to shield my two young daughters from as much as I can, hoping they, too, can be insulated by the green grasses of the suburbs for awhile longer, inoculated from fear by the innocence of youth — a time period that seems to shrink as each generation marches by.
These interesting times should make us, the soft and spoiled children and grandchildren of generations who have endured much more, tougher and wiser.
They should cause us to innovate and transform. We survived earlier medical challenges with the advent of vaccines and antibiotics. We emerged from the ’60s with a better grasp of racial and gender equality.
The next big thing, whether it’s in science or politics or entertainment, is now waiting to be discovered, or acted upon, to help pull us through these times.
Even so, I’d rather not live in interesting times. I do, however, relish the thought of having lived through them.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com
