Christmas Spirit?

Trying to find my Christmas spirit right now...it is a bit slow in loading...I hate what our country has become, how we have allowed multimillion dollar media corporations, including so called social media, to manipulate our emotions and thoughts, creating a tribal mentality pitting human beings against each other. Never in my life have I witnessed such anger, vitriol, and hatred, absolute hatred, against other human beings, as I have witnessed over the past 12 years. Elections have become so controversial and polarized as to create huge rifts between not only Congress, but coworkers, friends, and even family take sides in some weird tribal mentality. People judge each other based on their vote—there is no longer a middle ground.

I am sick and tired of having to watch what I say, or what I agree with, for if I do not jump in the fray that is being vilified on CNN or FOX, then I must be blind or stupid or void of all common sense and compassion. When did who I vote for become the sole defining quality of a person? Why is there a ‘left’ or a ‘right?’ When did our social graces, common courtesies, etiquette, and the golden rule disappear from the landscape? When did four letter words become so commonplace in a supposedly civilized, cultured society, so much so that anyone can tell someone they have never met, except behind a keyboard, to go F*** off? How did the United States of America become so banal and vulgar? 

I am seventy years old, on the downhill slope of my time on earth, and I love this planet, God’s creation, but especially I love people, all kinds, everywhere. I do not think God only blesses America, or that we are somehow above hurting each other, but dammit haven’t we learned anything in the past 250 years? Do we really hate each other so much that we are willing to kill someone for their beliefs? We should be better than this, I tell myself, but in reality, we are not. Labels like Nazi, idiot, socialist, homophobe, misogynist, a racist, bigoted, entitled, snowflake, fraudulent, Fascist, narcissist, and others equally demoralizing flow freely from people’s keyboards and lips these days. There is no intelligent banter anymore, or lively debate where folks on opposite sides can still laugh, hug, and be friends afterwards. Americans are now pigeon-holed into some pre-determined mold as soon as they open their mouths. 

I have been fighting for three years to maintain a 25-year long friendship with someone who I thought was open minded, someone who could look beyond my age, my race, my faith, or my political leaning and still see me as someone worth loving. That ended tonight. And I am broken hearted over the loss, not just the loss of this friend, but my inability to reason with her.  

The devil is laughing his ass off right now…because he thinks he has won by pitting people against each other so they lose focus on what is important—love each other and love God. And just because I know the devil has already lost does not make all of this any easier. 

Please be kind to each other, to anyone actually, not just during this Christmas season, but every season. Merry Christmas to each and every one of you.

The silent boom

Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, have lived through a lot. I know. I'm a boomer.  But lately I feel as if I am slowly, inexorably becoming invisible, my past experience, mistakes, awards, successes, and achievements ignored or even mocked. Labeled insignificant, judgmental, old fashioned, out of touch. Does not matter that I experienced social upheavals, watched as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the self-conflagration of monks in Hanoi, the assassination of JFK and his brother and their funeral cavalcades, the explosions of Mt St Helens, and lived through the Korean, Vietnam, and Cold Wars, and watched the Berlin Wall fall. I was in my 30s when the computer lumbered into businesses, so huge that one mainframe filled an entire city block. I've used a telephone connected to the wall, then cordless phones (actually calling people on them); my generation dreamed up, then built and produced Microsoft Windows, the iPhone, laptops, and the internet.  

I remember the Dewey decimal system and card catalogs, and laboriously researched papers and theses at the library, meticulously typing out double-spaced term papers on a manual or possibly IBM selectric typewriter, using whiteout and chalk to cover errors. I remember chalkboards before chalkboard paint was a trend.  Carbon paper. Encyclopedias. Home cooking. Full-service gas stations. Cloth diapers. Church bingo. Mister Softee. Cooling off by running through sprinklers. Fourth of July parades.  Butcher shops.  Hallmark cards.  Writing letters. Coin collections. Catcher in the Rye. Doris Day and Rock Hudson. The Fonz. Sunday dinners. Photo albums. Kodak cameras. Records—33, 45, and 78 rpm. The protests of the 60s, flower power, and Woodstock.  The opening of Walt Disney World and the riots in Harlem and Watts. Easter bonnets and dressing up for church, speaking in hushed tones, genuflecting. And getting the “look” from mom when I were too wiggly in the pews. 

My generation heralded the eradication of smallpox, survived chicken pox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, rubella, and tonsillitis without a vaccine. Dated, married, held my own newborn children and the hands of my parents on their deathbeds. Bought homes, paid them off, and owned several cars. Watched as the interstate highways connected travelers and families. We went to college, held several jobs, and had the first all-volunteer military. We were the first to sign up for direct deposit and IRAs. Corrected scores of kids’ homework and attended their basketball, football, and band competitions. Nursed them through flu, strep throat, surgeries, and worse. Many have lost a child, a spouse, a sibling. 

We’ve finally made it. We have accepted, adapted and adopted this brave new world. All we want now is to share our hard-earned wisdom and knowledge and experience. To be deemed useful. Needed. Respected. Honored.  We desperately ache to make a difference. To leave some small trace of ourselves as we fulfill the plans God has for us.  We don’t want to go silently into that good night. 

Yet those who are younger think they are smarter, faster,  more important. They see our wrinkles and grey hair not as badges of life, but as handicaps.  We begin to fade, the edges get blurry and colors melt into each other.  Finally we disappear. Until nothing is left but an epitaph and two dates separated by a hyphen. 

And the world is the poorer for it.