We're Still Here: A GenXer's Thoughts on Ten Years of Marriage and the State of the World

 

This past week, my wife and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. A decade. One tenth of a century. According to brides.com, the traditional “metal” of this occasion is aluminum. While not as dignified as silver or flashy as gold, aluminum has a beauty all its own. The substance is flexible, durable, and adaptable, all elements of a good union between people that looks to stand the test of time!

As humans, we are wired to mark time. From birthdays to graduation dates, we count down how far it is until something will happen or after something has happened. Like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs, these dates in time either help us find the path forward or to go back to where we were in the first place if required.

Our online world certainly has made such forward and backward motion easier. From digital photo archives to searchable Facebook posts, we can take a walk backward in time with a few clicks of the button. My wife, who’s walking in her mom’s footsteps as the photographer in our greater family, does a magnificent job of providing a weekly window back in time in her Facebook memories. When you see pictures of yourself from a decade ago, the enormity of change and the undefeatable power of time hit you hard and fast.

There’s the stuff that everyone expects…line-free foreheads and beards without gray hair. There’s the waistline you wish you still had and the hairstyle you’re glad that you don’t. And then there’s the people. The friends you haven’t seen in too long. The people who were struggling a little with a specific challenge….who are now struggling a LOT. The family who are no longer with you on the planet.

And then there’s the good stuff. The realization that some of the people in those pictures had already been a part of your life for 20 years when the shot was taken, and that they still are today. That even though you’re not as young and fresh-faced as you were when that flash bulb went off, that there are few more miles left in your tank. Perhaps the best realization is that the past ten trips around the sun have made you love the woman in the wedding dress even more than you ever thought you could.

As a GenXer, the home road to 50 is a curious and interesting journey. Members of my cohort grew up with landline phones, owned video games, and were the first generation en masse to use the world wide web. We were born into a world firmly rooted in the last gasps of a 20^th century shaped by post-WWII American global superiority and came of age in the land of recessions, global power struggles, and an uncertain future.

Hitting 50 in the first quarter of the 21^st century is very much like looking forward and backward at the same time. The echoes of the Korean War were sung to us as children, with family members who had served in the military sharing their experiences…including the need to fear the rise of China as an economic superpower. Our teachers urged us to recycle and save the planet, while avoiding tobacco and drug use. A mysterious disease with no cure called AIDS was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. We lived in fear of atomic with the Russians war while watching apocalyptic movies like “the Day After.”

In addition, nearly every cartoon or show aimed at kids also positioned quicksand as a major threat to life on earth as well.

And here we are. A nuclear-powered North Korea periodically lobs test rockets into the Sea of Japan to provoke world powers. China is challenging the U.S. for our increasingly tenuous grip on the number one slot. Glaciers are melting at a rate that scientists couldn’t predict while teens turn to vaping and prescription pills. Millions have died from a global pandemic which, thankfully, seems to be nearing its end. A small, wretched man named Putin deals with humiliating battlefield defeats with threats of pushing the button.

The good news? So far, quicksand has turned out to be a far less pervasive global threat than we thought it would be….

Indeed, it’s the ability to look back and say “we’ve seen this before” that helps me get to sleep at night. Dictators with doomsday devices have engaged in saber rattling since there have been “ultimate weapons.” From AIDS to crack cocaine, every disease or threat to the youth of America has been managed or dealt with. The crazy inflation we’re experiencing has visited us before in our lifetimes, even if we were too young to understand what it meant (well, beyond mom switching to generic cereals). Even in the midst of daily school shootings, somehow a new normal prevails.

I don’t mean to trivialize any of these tragedies, but my main point is that somehow, despite ourselves, the human race has not yet managed to completely blow up the planet. Perhaps even in the most ludicrous human beings there’s some kind of sanity meter that keeps us from collectively going too far. Maybe in some way we’re all networked to ensure we never exceed a certain amount of combined insanity. For example, for every Kim Jong Un-level action, say attempting to provoke WWIII with yet another missile strike, five hundred nuns will start orphanages.  For every CEO who lays off half his workforce a month before Christmas to increase share prices, an entire college takes a day off from classes to provide services to underprivileged people in their communities. The balance is maintained.

You may be asking what a discussion about the perpetual balance between order and Armageddon has to do with a ten-year wedding anniversary. I answer as follows: Regardless of how crazy the world gets, no matter how close we come to spinning off our axis, we’re still here. The ability to see how little actually seems to change in the collective existence of the planet means we can focus on what does change, namely the precious moments in our personal lives. By focusing on what we CAN change, the same energy that powers angst can be put to better use in our own families and communities.

At the same time, those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a stable country should consider doing two things: 1. Being grateful for our circumstances and 2. Helping where we can. Yes, our country has a TON of problems, from political divisions to people literally shooting at power stations. But a foreign adversary isn’t lobbing missiles into our cities. Despite the wealth divide, most of us get enough to eat and have a roof over our heads. Whether it’s local, national, or international, we have an opportunity to share our good fortune. We have power to contribute to the power balance…to right the sanity meter I mentioned. This sense of empowerment, after all, is how we find faith in the future.

When I married my bride in December 2012, believers in the Mayan “doomsday” calendar would’ve predicted that we’d have less than a month to spend in wedded bliss. Turns out they were wrong; the world didn’t stop turning. As a result, I’ve lived my first ten years of what I hope will be a long lifetime together with my soulmate. We’ve seen the challenges facing our country and world before…and I hope to live long enough to see them again with a warm hand to hold.