Life these days. .

It seems some of you have not heeded the warnings of my previous post, so I offer an insight. I am told that my age, 28, places me at the end of “Generation X” and at the beginnings of “Generation Why.” I don’t know if this is true and it doesn’t really matter, but what is does signify is that people my age are confused. Most of us, if we look deep enough, are lost. I grew up in an era of peace. The Cold War was ending; the threat of nuclear war wasn’t as real as everyone told me. Aside from Marines capturing a drug lord in Panama and Communists threatening a few below average medical students in the Caribbean, not much happened during my childhood. The first Gulf War wasn’t much more than a live video game in which no one actually saw people dying on TV. Don’t get me wrong, Capt. Scott O’Grady was exciting, but I was never threatened, it never seemed that real. I didn’t know anyone fighting wars or sweeping floors, let alone dying, in far off countries as my parents had and their parents had. Maybe I was fooled into believing that the world had become better and that my country had played a part in that transformation. Maybe the world had changed. I believe the world became a better place in the last thirty years and it frightens me how quickly those advances have been wiped off the books. For some of my generation, events since 9/11 cause even deeper confusion. For others, they cause stronger convictions. What is certain is that the world of my childhood is gone. Maybe my children will be able to look upon their nation, as I did, as the symbol of all that was good on this earth, but I don’t think so. The truth is I’m haunted by prospects of what’s coming next.