This has always been Us

Irish writer, Niall Williams wrote that “when you are born in one century and find yourself walking around in another, there's a certain infirmity to your footing. May we all be so lucky to live long enough to see our time turn to fable.”

Having been blessed with that time myself, here is my fable to tell.

Once upon a time, there was a famous music festival. Its name was Woodstock, and it came to symbolize the shifting cultural norms of the day.

The previous generation, who as children had all trudged miles to school in the snow, worked hard and believed that the institutions they struggled to build and protect were finally going to make peace and justice a reality.

It is every generation’s job to grab the baton out of the hand of the previous generation and continue the race, which my generation did with great gusto. We grew up with more security than our parents had and went to college in droves. We looked around and saw injustice. Trusting no one over thirty, we mobilized and marched against the Vietnam War. A hippie subculture “checked out” of society and lived communally off the land. We believed we were building a new world, where social justice, civil rights, gender equality, and environmental awareness would finally make peace and justice a reality.

But, as in all fables, a shadow fell over the land. As the movement aged, increased drug use and related health problems gripped the Age of Aquarius, and the rejection of all things “establishment,” including wondering if God was dead, made many of the ideals of the time unsustainable in the long run.

The story of today’s generation, although too young to fablize, feels eerily familiar. Many in this generation grew up with less security and fewer paths to the American dream than the previous generation, so they are confronting injustice and inequality from a different vantage point, but with a similar passion. There is even an equally extreme subculture convinced that social upheaval will finally make peace and justice a reality. God may not be dead this time around, but God seems to mean different things to different people.

In the end, every generation writes its own chapter in this unfolding narrative. And though the specifics change, the heartbeat remains the same. This has always been us; longing for justice and peace is a timeless endeavor. Perhaps Mother Theresa was right when she said, “if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

In today’s wave of social upheaval, we all might find some hope in reconnecting with that truth. By rediscovering our shared humanity, we might just reclaim the civility we've lost somewhere along the way.