Always remember. Back in the dawn of man, a grizzled old caveman stumbled outside one morning and said, "It's all just going to Hell." I've always been determined not to be that guy. And one reason I can manage that is that I know the world today would have a very, very long way to go to return to its sorry state of even some 100 years ago and less.
The Great Depression, a scourge with no end in sight. Did not end, in fact, until replaced by a greater scourge.
Two wars, both of them imagined to be short but both turning out to have no end in clear sight.
A nation consumed by fear of saying the wrong thing, singing the wrong song, or simply being accused by an enemy and going to jail or prison, because a president wouldn't tolerate being questioned.
Hundred of Black citizens, more probably thousands, many of them returned combat veterans, burned alive, lynched and simply killed out of hand, for no reason other than it was presumed they would get "uppity." And a president who did precisely nothing, except to have closed the better federal jobs to Blacks, whom he believe insufficiently evolved.
A massive flu pandemic, more terrifying, because we didn't have even today's bare information about where it came from, how it spread or if there would be an end to it.
People driven out of a large part of the central U.S., made uninhabitable by nature and their own hubris, to go blindly west with nothing but a mere hope of maybe feeding starving children.
My problems are nothing compared to my great-great-great-grandfather's in McNairy County, Tennessee, who knew where he stood and fought in Hurst's irregular volunteer cavalry for the Union and died in his bed back in NcNairy County.
If I have lived past those times, it is entirely a good thing. I am not weary, except in failing body. I think I am, in fact, able to more or less coast through these times, bad as they are, because I know how. And because I remember the people who lived through those times. I don't need things to be unchanging. What a bore that would be.
Consider, when longing for compassion, respect, community spirit, morals, and simple kindness toward all life of an earlier time how very narrowly, how meanly, those things were offered.
This is a hugely exciting time. Aside from the grief for people whose lives are blighted by being unable to avoid exposure to disease, there are also great things afoot and great evils to be fought. And I still have small contributions to make. But I don't fret over it. I know to expect betterment in moderation. But for all the noise, the world has become ever steadily a better place and will, with luck, continue to do so. Not an entirely comfortable place, but then it never was. That's just part of the deal. But so is the garden and it's infinite possibilities.
