Becoming an Engaged Citizen

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

This may be the last time anyone who actually participated in World War II will be alive to commemorate a milestone like this. Many have already died. They have been called the Greatest Generation. There are many reasons for this. Not just participating in World War II, but living through the Great Depression and other issues both prior to and after.

Some of them remembered the abundance and optimism of the 1920s. Many of them remember the devastation of the 1930s. And all of them remembered the fear, destruction and DEATH during the second World War. Millions did not survive these decades. The western world was inextricably changed by these decades. Now those who were there are dwindling. Stories are being forgotten and lost.

I am not part of this generation. My parents were. I am a baby boomer. Our generation benefited greatly from the sacrifice and changes that these people made as we grew up. Yes, there was still strife and war, yes, there was inequality, discrimination of all sorts, but our society was forever changed by the differences created by the Greatest Generation.

I can tell you, anecdotally, that some members of my generation did not, or do not understand how their lives changed because of the Greatest Generation. In fact, some of them feel entitled to the prosperity and wealth that was created for them by their parents. Others, those of color, women, LGBTQ, were discriminated against and did not reap many of the benefits of our prosperous society after the war.

My Father was too old to enlist, but he did try. They said no. He had been in the Swedish Navy when he was eighteen some twenty plus years before the U.S. entered World War II. So he stayed and worked at GM in Chicago. They were producing locomotives for the war effort. My Mother worked as a cook and waitress, feeding the workers on the south side of Chicago. They both had lived through the Great Depression. My mother as a teen who had to quit school at 16 to find a job to help keep her family together. She was the oldest of five. Both her parents worked as well. I’m not sure about my father. He was in his thirties and had just come to the United States in 1933. They were married in 1934.

I wonder if my generation, having experienced the prosperity after World War II, the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, the optimism of John F Kennedy presidency and the huge hole that was left after not only his assassination but also those of Martin Luther King, Malcom X and his own younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, lost its innocence is such a horrific way that so jaded us to lose our faith in anything or anyone greater than our present, including ourselves.

We have stopped dreaming or even believing we can have any influence on the future. I do not remember Korea but the rest is firmly planted in my memory. Many of my peers are so myopic and concerned with their own little worlds. I have my feet in two different worlds. Raised to believe I could do anything I chose to, even as a woman, and later as a lesbian. My parents allowed me the freedom to make my own choices, regardless of their personal views. Maybe I was the exception to the rules of the rest of my generation, but I do not think so. I grew up in the turbulent sixties and became an adult in the weird seventies. Through all this I held on to the optimism and the hope of making the world a better place. Others in my generation did not. They became jaded, disheartened and want to go back to what they considered a better time. Was it? I look back without the rose-colored glasses they seem to wear.

I study history. I see the inequality of then and now. I see the hatred of things and people who are “different.” I see the fear of loss. I have felt that loss, personally. Life is different now, yes. We are growing and changing. It is inevitable. Because there is only forward, fast, slow or stall, there is still no reverse when it comes to life. Fear of the unknown is normal. The future is always unknown to some extent. But as Americans, we have always looked forward, not backward. We can learn from the past but we cannot recreate it.

I hope I am incorrect. I hope that we can again believe in hope and maybe even optimism. I look toward the future with guarded joy. I see this latest generation, so much younger than I, and I see sparks of the young people that believe they can help others, find solutions to our seemingly overwhelming problems and maybe, just maybe they have some of the optimism I remember from my youth, so long ago.

The changes we run toward and then just as quickly run away from, will continue to come. It is our only constant, change. Let us move forward with guarded optimism and hope. Because we cannot move backward EVER.