I didn’t ask for this.
Most of us didn’t. No one wanted to be living through the time of a world pandemic, global warming, and so many oddly strong natural disasters it seems unnerving even to those of us who aren’t the doomsday type. Millennials didn’t look forward to being the generation to move back in with our parents, never buy houses, or have to undo all the damage that finally caught up with the world from the previous carelessness. Boomers weren’t so thrilled about the 2008 depression. Never before has it been so obvious that we are living in history. Children will study what we are living through today.
History’s Issues Seem so Cut and Dry
Folks look back on slavery and say well it is so obvious that it’s wrong. But preachers pulled out the Bible to tell folks it was the will of God. If you were raised in that time, you could have figured it out, but everything would have been working against you. You would have fallen in with what was normal, how you were raised, what your family believed, what was preached and pushed on you from the time you were small and so found yourself on the side of what is now the backward south. The same thing is going to happen with the issues of today. School children a decade, a century down the line will look back and not see a hard-to-understand issue worth fighting over for years. Instead many of the issues we now face will be viewed as laughably simplistic with obviously right answers.
Those after Us
I am not sure which way history will remember the fights of this century. Abortion, a living wage, immigration, climate change, and green energy. I am trying to look at these issues from the lens of those who will come after me. I want my kids, my grandkids, to look at the things that happened during this time and for me to be able to proudly tell them where I stood during the middle of all the chaos. I want my descendants to be proud of me and the choices I made. I want to make my ancestors proud and to be proud of what I leave behind.
We Are Living History
I did not ask to be born in a time with so many big questions to answer that could shape so much for so many people. None of us asked to be born in the middle of a history book argument. People don’t get a choice in the circumstances of their birth or in the events that float into their lives. Honestly, I’m not super thrilled about living in such tumultuous times despite their historical precedence. Still, I choose to take this as an opportunity to understand that even on a microscopic level I can make a mark on the future. How lucky are we to have the chance to impact our history and know that we are doing it. We should choose wisely where we decide to make our stand for we can be sure that history will remember the verdict and our families will remember our choices.
