Monday, June 18, 2018

Still Here, but really

I'm so tired.

They said it was just a bunch of crazy kids, didn't understand how the world worked. And some of those kids got shot and killed, just a few years older than I was at the time. It was a peaceful protest, but people with guns got scared.

Nevertheless, our troops did eventually get pulled out of Viet Nam. I stopped being afraid for the boys I grew up with.

And those freedom marchers, and lunch counter sitters. Useless. Things can never change.

And sometimes I wonder, how much has changed.  People my age, people who saw the things I saw, people who should know better, want to turn back those pages. They lost jobs and fear strangers and are desperately trying to hold on. Fear has a way of making people act badly.

Like being so afraid of the refugees at the border that you can find a way to justify separating kids from their parents.

And I can't help but think of how many of the kids I grew up with thought that they would stand up to the Nazis, that they would recognize the early signs and take a stand.  And now I hear them trying to excuse and justify.

And I wonder, is this how we lose our values, our center, our humanity; worn down by fear, worn out, no longer able to fight.

"Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding ..." And that future of love, peace, rock and roll. We believed so hard, it seemed possible.

But I have hope. I'm looking to you, struggling Xer's. I'm looking to you, stressed beyond all reason millennials. I'm looking to you, my beautiful children and friends of my children. I don't know how much fight I have left, but you are my hope that the fight has not been in vain.

I'm looking to you to keep telling the truth. I'm looking to you to keep loving beyond the boundaries of fear. Most of all, I'm looking to you to vote and vote and vote until every representative represents people instead of  big business.

I'm tired, and I don't know how much fight I have left, but I'm still here.