Today is my 57th birthday. I’m celebrating in quiet solitude on my boat in Mexico. Actually, more reflecting than celebrating, and I find cause to both lament and celebrate in my reflections so it’s like a big birthday stew of thoughts and feelings.
I feel like my life has been riding what was once a nice wave but which is now breaking and tumbling towards the beach, where it will ultimately dissipate its energy and recede back into the ocean. This wave metaphor arises from contemplating my own life and what has happened and is happening around me in the world of which I am a part.
I was born at the dawn of the space age. America was in a Cold War technological race with the Soviet Union, when science and technology were driving forces and culturally revered. The same technology was responsible for the horror of mutual destruction by nuclear war that hung over our heads, but the space race did much to turn that fear into hope. My dad worked at a national laboratory, the government eagerly paying him to do pure research into the nature of matter and the universe with no goal other than to contribute to the growth of human knowledge. I grew up believing that intelligence, facts, science and logic would lead us to a bright future. I admired Mr. Spock on Star Trek, wanted to be like him and believed that the life and the world would be a better place if emotions were suppressed to focus energy towards rational observation, analysis and action. Each lift off of an ever-bigger rocket, man orbiting then walking on the moon, rooms of white-shirted engineers cheering each success followed by astronaut parades and White House visits, reinforced my notion that science was the path to a better life. I jumped onto that path with enthusiasm. To this day I still experience a feeling of majesty of human achievement when I see fiery images of a Saturn V rocket lifting off and I still get a bit choked up when I hear recordings of Neil Armstrong’s crackling voice announce, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” as he bounced onto the surface of the moon.
My emotions did get a hold of me during the civil rights movement, though. I doubt that my mom sees herself as having been one, but she was a civil rights activist back then. She helped establish an integrated pre-school in our almost all-white part of Long Island, participated in the Fresh Air program and hosted black children from the city in our home during the summer, and she steadfastly championed equal rights and opportunities. My dad’s cricket team brought people of many colors and nationalities to our house for post-match parties where calypso music played, Indian curries were eaten and the formerly-colonized bantered good naturedly with their white British teammates. The only racism in our house was of a benevolent kind, a desire to help right wrongs perpetrated by our race on others, in ways naïve and patronizing, but with the best of intentions. I admired Dr. Martin Luther King and his speeches moved me to my core, as they still do. Here, Mr. Spock took a backseat to my Captain Kirk’s emotional altruism and sense of civic duty.
I was still a kid during the race riots and Vietnam war protests of the late 60’s and early 70’s, but they left a big positive mark on me. I witnessed young people challenging the status quo and winning change, newspapers bravely taking on the government and printing the truth about the war and Nixon’s dirty politics, a country successfully rising up against the moral corruption of its own government. I remember celebrating the first Earth Day and the subsequent creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and enactment of legislation to clean up our water, air and land. We pulled out of Vietnam, entered into a détente with the Soviet Union and established diplomatic ties with Mao’s China. I saw the hope of world peace, a goal that made obvious logical sense to me and which also lifted my spirit and belief in humanity’s potential to solve its problems peacefully.
Entering adulthood, I enjoyed the progress made on all these fronts, technological, human rights, environmental and international relations. While there were many bumps and setbacks along the way, I perceived a steady movement in the 80’s and 90’s towards a better world. A steady reduction in poverty, the fall of the Berlin wall and end of the Cold War, less litter, cleaner air and water in the U.S., consumer rights and protection, more minorities attending college and less crime. This wave I enjoyed riding reached its sweetest moments by the election of a black president and the legal and cultural validation of same-sex marriage. While life and the world fell far short of being perfect, it seemed like what I believed in was working pretty well.
And just like a wave that reaches its crest, much of what I believed in started tumbling down upon itself with America’s reaction to the 911 attacks and then accelerating after Obama’s election. Racism started rearing its ugly head. The commonwealth started succumbing to individual rights and economic self-interest. Clean air and water turned into business-strangling over-regulation. The power of money in politics eclipsed democracy and political activism, the people power of the 60’s and 70’s. Professional journalism was overcome by biased, targeted media. Religious fundamentalism, fake news and baseless denials beat down on facts, science and rationale thought. Even Mr. Spock morphed in the movies from the ship’s science officer into some Gandalf-like philosophical being.
Now, on my birthday, the wave has crashed, now a frothing turbulence lacking the form and substance of its once mighty crest. Racism is overt, encouraged by our president, who also demonizes and insults non-white immigrants. Environmental regulations are being gutted and those that remain, weakly enforced. Our government is locked up in mortal partisan combat, its only recent accomplishment the fiscal bankrupting of the country for our children and grandchildren. Health care is an expensive privilege for fewer and fewer people, while we spend more and more on defense. And our answer to school shootings is to arm teachers, clearly indicating that some are giving up on making America great again and are willing to settle for mere survival. I weep over so much greatness, that took so long to achieve being lost, all so quickly.
My own life is also in frothing turbulence as I contemplate how to be as I draw closer to my metaphorical beach. Mr. Spock tells me to give up on humans and morph into some Gandlaf-like philosophical being. Captain Kirk urges me to fight the evil Klingons, Romulians and the Borg on behalf of the free, cosmopolitan United Federation and that I have a moral duty to do so. I don’t know which advice is right for me and I know there is more for me to understand and consider. I’m waiting patiently for the right actions to reveal themselves to me while I ride on my wave in its current frothy form with open eyes and an open heart .
Yes, my beliefs and faith are shaken. Yes, I am worried about the future. But I accept things as they are and that so much is beyond my control. And I am still inspired by nature, science, champions of social justice, brave journalists, and the ordinary people who rise up to try and make things better for us all. I find beauty all around me when I take the time to look, in the waves that are forming, the waves that are formed, the waves that are breaking and the waves returning back to where they came.
I find my happy birthday among the beauty in these waves.
2 comments On Birthday Reflections and Waves
I am 13 years older than you – a little younger than your parents would be (if they are still alive, I hope). I too have been reflecting deeply, since I just recently turned 70. These landmarks are worthy of great celebration, and I’m sad to think that you are alone and in reflection instead. I enjoyed reading about your life so far, and I can very well relate to many things you said. So, Bravo! for having come this far.
I wonder if you’ll indulge my additional thoughts on life then and now. I drew many parallels reading about your growing up, and how you see the world as it is now. Perhaps they might better be shared on my own blog, but I don’t have one. And you inspired me actually to discover how I’m really feeling. So thank you! But feel free to delete, if you prefer. My feelings will not be hurt.
In regards to family life, I am finding I miss my parents more as the days go by, instead of the other way around. My Dad died before I turned 40 and my Mum, four years later. They, along with many others, provided me with a safe, loving, inclusive society in which to live and grow up. I wasn’t always told I was loved, but I knew I most certainly was. I was encouraged and supported. In their sixties, I supported them. Now a senior member of society myself and older than my memories of them, I feel alone and worried about my daily survival – financially, emotionally, and from a soul level. It’s deep. I cannot explain to you effectively enough, how deep it is. Yet, I could relate to everything you wrote about experiencing so far in life. Living in today’s society is a cultural shock for me. Perhaps it’s the ten plus years I have on you, but my waves are winning the fight to take me down. Riding them is becoming more and more difficult.
My children (in their forties) are also in survival mode – for many different reasons. They cannot relate to my situation. Nor can they help me through it. My role in the family circle has been reversed from when my parents were alive. Kids in this age-range seem to be paralyzed for fear of having to look up, or they will lose their foothold. They have the same responsibilities my parents and I had: Children to house, feed, clothe and help through college to give them the start in life they need. But they are trying to live in a very different world than we did. It’s true, it is still fighting among itself. But people are now failing to recognize any sort of moral obligation to each other or another human being, more than ever in history. Both parents work 2 or 3 jobs, with little or no benefits, and are faced with costs rising exponentially, unequal to the pay they are working so hard for. They are no longer able to see outside of their own four walls. Their children (my grandchildren) are being schooled in a changed society that is now always looking over its shoulder, for fear they will be stepped on, ridiculed, shot, or poisoned by what they eat or drink, with their electronics glued to their hips. And they are experiencing all of science and research being thrown out with the bathwater, and living in an environment that is systematically being destroyed – all in the name of progress. You, in a sense, might actually, in reality, be riding on the cusp of those changes. My stepchildren in their fifties and sixties seemed to have escaped just in time. That particular ten-year period in which they were born seemed to be a saving grace for that generation. I have no idea why I believe this, but it’s what I am seeing develop with my own eyes. Perhaps this is the wave you are feeling? Or perhaps “sensing” is a better description.
Hope and prayers used to be my mainstay. I’m sad to admit, even that isn’t working lately. And I feel this is not going to change any time soon. But I keep on plugging; speaking up for what I believe in, and supporting the young folks the best I know how. Once a woman with great resolve, with an always-positive outlook, sometimes admittedly wearing rose colored glasses, I’m simply now very bedraggled and worn around the edges. I’m exhausted – partly because of what I am experiencing my family go through, and definitely in the struggle to keep my head above water myself. I tell myself I’m not that old. But I feel old and I don’t like it.
The only saving grace for me is that I see all my contemporaries feeling the same way, so I realize that I’m not alone in this. And, as I write this, I ask myself incredulously, “This is your saving grace?” and I shake my head in disbelief.
I wish I could give you a few words of wisdom and tell you that all will be well. I pray for this every day. Yet, I cannot come up with the words, because I don’t have any answers. I don’t even know how this happened. But what I can do is to celebrate you at the end of your fiftieth decade, for you made it this far and the tide is still with you. So, Happy Birthday! I pray your next decade will bring the change that we all so desperately need. May you be a part of that success.
And, may God help us all!
Thank you for sharing so much of yourself, Dierdre, and for your kind words of support. What you write gives me much to consider. Perhaps your saving grace is not as limited as you perceive it. You are not alone in this. We are not alone in this. Hope lies in that connection?
Although I have not read his books yet, I am intrigued by what I learn of Steven Pinker’s optimistic writings, as in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature. In a recent column, David Brooks identifies what I believe is the missing ingredient to Pinker’s rational, scientific perspective, that is, the importance of relationships and connection. No simple solutions here, but perhaps a way for us to see the world in a bit brighter light and a pointer towards something better.
You have motivated me to write more on this subject after I’ve done more homework and contemplation. Thank you.
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