As another sixty-somethingth Christmas
approaches, I’m reminded of how fortunate I am to have stuck around this long. For
my family and me, on balance, this has been a good year. We’ve managed to stay mostly healthy, we’ve stayed
afloat financially, and we celebrated our daughter’s wedding amidst some
extraordinary and challenging weather-related events. If we avoid looking
beyond our happy little bubble, life is good.
But if we peer into the abyss that
is the real world, things are a bit more grim.
Around this time last year, I wrote
about the challenges we had faced as a society in 2022, and expressed optimism
about the likelihood of a kinder, gentler 2023.
“Green shoots,” I said. I was
wrong. With a scant seven days left, I
don’t think we’re going to get there.
Part of me struggles to understand
why not, given historically low unemployment, inflation that is trending in the
right direction (albeit from uncomfortably high levels), booming financial
markets, ever-increasing advancements in medicine (gene therapy for Alzheimer’s?
A weight loss drug that works?) and technology (AI for the masses? Free?) …and
on, and on. By many measures, the kids
are alright, or will soon be.
But most of me knows full well why
not: two major wars are dragging on, humanitarian crises abound all around the
world, and the bifurcation of our country along multiple dimensions seems to
worsen daily. We are facing a mental
health crisis, an immigration crisis, near-daily mass shootings, and the
highest suicide rate since 1941. “Devastating
storms” are now a nightly segment on the national TV news. Our journey toward a despondency borne of
tribalism and mistrust has been underway for several years, and was/is still
being amplified by the effects of the pandemic and by the pathetic,
deteriorating state of political discourse in this country. The Atlantic recently published an article
called “How
America Got Mean.” As much as we may
want to believe otherwise, these things are not getting better.
So, this is the part where I’m supposed
to switch gears and deliver a heartwarming holiday message of hope for a better
future. I’m not sure I’m all-in on that,
but I’ll offer a few observations:
One of the benefits, or perhaps
curses, of getting older is the acquisition of longer-term perspectives on many
things. What we once may have called déjà
vu feels more like “wait a minute, I’ve seen this movie before.” Fashion, for example, is famously cyclical.
Bell bottoms become boot-cut jeans, mom jeans, skinny jeans, ripped jeans,
relaxed-fit jeans, flood jeans, bell bottoms. “Vintage” is in, until it’s not. Shag carpets were back, for a minute and a
half. History neither repeats nor
rhymes, but it does inform.
Today, we face a ‘housing affordability
crisis.’ Houses are in short supply,
prices are high, and this is all exacerbated by “high interest rates” on home
mortgages. As of today, the average interest
rate on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage is 6.34% (Source: Business Insider,
12/23/2023). Compared with rates across
the past decade, that is indeed relatively high. But… when I bought my first condo, in 1983,
the average rate on a 30 year fixed was 13.24%.
That was down from the previous year’s average, which was 16.04%. I mention this, not to minimize the difficulty
that young people face today when trying to buy a home (my daughter and her husband
are among them – it’s not easy); but rather to convey that the sense of despair
that many feel due to what, in their experience, are unprecedented levels of
borrowing hell, like everything, fits into a larger context.
I can’t in good conscience, nor do
I want to trivialize the countless real problems that we collectively face. But I will suggest that if we reflect a bit,
we may find parallels in our history that can contextualize our experiences in
way that both validates and also, importantly, normalizes some of our own
reactions, as aberrant as they may feel within our own lived reality. We are right to recoil in horror, to viscerally
experience and internalize the inhumanity of wars that are served up on the big
screen daily. We should be
concerned about what our future will look like if climate change continues to
accelerate. It is understandable that
we struggle to reconcile our fear of the unknown with our compassion for
others.
But in most cases, we’ve seen some
version of the movie before; and in all cases, the movie eventually ended, and
life went on. To live in today’s world
is to experience pain; but to lack, or to lose perspective would be so much
worse.
It’s a sad fact that the holidays tend always
to magnify the suffering of those experiencing anxiety, depression, hunger,
loneliness, or a myriad of other ills. I
would love to be able to say that I’m brimming with unbridled optimism for the
future, but that would be a lie. Still,
there’s a small child within me who wants to believe in some version of
Christmas magic. Maybe it’s simply
this: As a parent, grandparent, and
plain old “old guy,” I want the younger folks in my orbit to understand that
things will eventually work out. I do
believe that.
The world is scary, but really, it
always has been; the scariness waxes and wanes, changes shape, and sometimes
even reverses (see, for example, widespread fear of “overpopulation” and the perceived
imperative of “Zero Population Growth” in the 1970s… today, we
are told, we face the opposite problem. History inverts?)
So hang in there, my people. I once again wish us all a better year
ahead. And if you find yourself in
despair, or you’re feeling hopeless, please reach out. I’ll be here.
Merry Christmas.
