Sooooooooo many friends right now are so disgusted with life, it's kind of amazing. Just yesterday I was to the point where I honestly was saying to myself, "I just don't give a shit anymore, and I don't really care that I don't give a shit anymore. Fuck." That's just how crappy things have been - I'd bet anyone reading this is probably feeling it.
Once upon a time, my grandmother told me, "AA, you need to make sure you save your money and spend it wisely, because while it might not be in my lifetime, very soon you'll go through a Great Depression again - I know it will happen, history repeats itself, just you wait and see." She said this about 20 years ago to me, and she's right. While we're not all in total belief that we're in "The Great Depression" as happened earlier in the last Century, if we stop and look at it, that's really where we're at - we just have more crap to keep us occupied while we deal with it. We have more responsibilities. We have more reasons. We have more thoughts...more likes and dislikes...we're more complex, and it's harder to unravel like it used to be.
"Back in the day" of the Great Depression, things were simpler. You worked, you bought your food - everything wasn't overly processed and doubly advertised. You probably weren't on more than one or two meds (if that) for anything major, and minor stuff you just pulled up your bootstraps and dealt with. Depression? Figure it out, deal with it, lean on your family, accept it and move on. Times will get better. We had a war, it brought people together. People could focus on something else, TOGETHER.
Are we at the point of no return? War used to bring people together because it had to, and now it pulls us all apart (ever since the Korean War, I think this has been historically true, for the United States, at least). We don't work together on any common goals. We act as if we don't care - and those of us that have been positive have started to drop down the rungs into negativity land where we're just not happy at all. AT ALL. That is depressing. We need hope and change and all the crap Obama was spouting during his campaign - but, we can't afford it, mentally.
I was thinking about this the other day, actually: While we might not be in a "Great Depression" in the financial sense (there's still food on most tables at night, we're not eating bread and ketchup because it's all we can afford, there's still food in the grocery stores being bought and gas in the tanks of our cars, even if it costs more, and most all of us have a cell phone, for Christ sakes, AND, obviously, Internet), we have, as a total population and society, landed into what I would consider the Great Mental Depression. Think about how you feel, even though you might have enough to get by...are you honestly happy? Probably not.
C and I were discussing some things over lunch today. It's quite amazing how different life is now compared to how it was just 30 years ago, when she was a kid. Back in "those days", if a kid was out of line in the grocery store a parent could smack them without being afraid the cops would be called - because the kid was out of line and needed to be smacked so they understood that wasn't acceptable behavior around a group of people. Now? Put the kid on drugs, they're acting up. What kind of b.s. is that, honestly? In the 80's we raised kids who wanted nothing more than MORE STUFF, and it's continued on, and we all see it - and now, we're drugging our kids because they mentally can't handle more stuff. Neither can we. How the fuck are we, as a society, going to handle ourselves in 20 years if everyone is drugged up and afraid to go outside? We're not...but, that might be a good thing. If we stay in this deep depression we're all in, if we keep drugging ourselves into oblivion, and stay in more (as we all seem to be doing) things will have to calm down. Society is slowing down in some respects because, let's face it, we've all had enough! That's a good thing. Let's hope that the world calms down because if it doesn't, we're honestly all screwed.
While part of me misses living in a larger city (I'm now in a rural part of the country), I don't miss all the bullshit that goes with it. I can be by myself, or with a limited number of other people, and do just fine. Sure, there are a lot of people out here that aren't too swift, but they've got something going on most others in larger areas don't: manners and respect. If you respect them, they leave you alone...just like a bee. People used to be like Honeybee's, now they've turned into Yellow Jackets. Sad to think about, isn't it? Honeybee's do good work...we used to do good work, too. Granted, there is still a good population of them out there, but we're dropping fast.
My grandmother was right, she just didn't realize it was going to be more than just a money issue...and, money can be fixed - it's harder to correct the emotional tide of sorrow.
-AA
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