Do you remember when that was true? The correct answer is that it was never simple. It seemed so for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was that we were young and naive – we didn’t understand what the true complexities of life were surrounding us. For many, that was because we grew up in families that provided for us, gave us a sense of security, and protected us from the hard facts of life.
Things were just as uncertain and complex as they are now and, in some cases, even more so. World War II and the privations through which we went paled in comparison to what happened in the rest of the world. Our hardships were food and gasoline rationing, the constant anxieties of parents who had sent their young sons off to battlefields on the other side of the world. That, hard though it was it did not compare to the devastation visited on the populations where the war was actually being fought. The Great Depression has had a mild reprise in The Great Recession which we are told is over but even at its worst, it certainly couldn’t compare with the food lines, the unemployment and the sense of desperation that gripped the country in the 1930’s.
We were protected when we were young by a sense of invulnerability; bad things happened to other people, but somehow we felt that we were exempt. That sense of insulation disappeared as we grew into the adult world. Today, I doubt that young people are as certain they are safe as we were. With the 24-hour news cycle and the reality of what is going on in Syria and Afghanistan, in China and Russia, in the Middle East have a much greater sense of immediacy than watching a newsreel at the movies with information from several weeks previous. Thanks to the Smart Phone we can see the havoc a suicide bomber in Baghdad has wrought before the dust has even begun to settle.
It is human nature to look back at the past and accentuate the positive. No place is that more evident than looking back at our early history. No one would deny that the Colonial times were hard but they were simpler than now: Survival was the raison d’etre. The Founding Fathers enjoy historical greatness which in their lifetimes they could hardly have imagined.
The truth is that great battles were waged over politically sensitive issues that rival our conflicts over healthcare, foreign policy, equal rights, immigration, the national debt, and a host of other equally important problems. Our politicians today accomplish very little, it seems, but at least they don’t try to kill one another on the floor of Congress as happened in the early years of the Republic.
So if we accept the fact that life never was, is not now, and never will be simple, what is one to do? At least we should not make things worse by insisting that we have revealed truth and if only everyone accepted our privileged possession of wisdom then all would, as the fairy tale always concludes, live happily ever after. Not going to happen . . . never!
But here’s one thought from which we could all profit. Christian or Jew, Hindu or Muslim, Shinto or Buddhist, agnostic or atheist, this is truly nonsectarian, but would help us all to live with the complexities of life: “Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr said those words more than 80 years ago and they immediately took on a life of their own. There is no substantiation that it was ever offered to Congress, but one can still hope our leaders will give the idea some thought. The 114th could hardly do worse than their predecessors who apparently thought that nothing could be changed and weren’t too serene about it. Only 65 bills were passed and the great majority was related to congressional housekeeping.
Complex though life is, we should all get out there and do the best we can. That includes listening to Reinhold Niebuhr.
– Hayden Hollingsworth
