Courtney’s Thoughts:
March 13, 2020, was the last day we woke up to a life we considered “normal.” By the end of that day, a national emergency was declared and everything changed. Unprecedented times, “they” said. Yet the times have never quite rebounded to precedented. Have they?
Barry asked if we should be panicking given the current state of the world. And to be honest, I was shocked that – despite our two-decade friendship – he has somehow failed to recognize the fact that I worry about everything. Every. Single. Thing. All. Day. Long.
My therapist tells me that I always expect the worst. I remind her that it is because some of the worst has happened to me. So, I like to be prepared for all bad scenarios – mostly those that end in total disaster – so that on the off-chance things go my way, I can be pleasantly surprised.
Pilots ring the flight attendant mid-flight. We’re going to crash.
Headlights shine in my driveway in the middle of the night. It’s the fire department telling me something has happened to my husband.
Dog sneezes. He has cancer.
Maybe it is age. Maybe it is the state of the world. But things are different once you hit 50.
I’m not a boss, I’m THE boss. I’m running the show now.
I’m responsible for the people, the culture, the vision, the budget, the buildings, the vehicles, the security, the IT.
Most people like me. A few hate me. And, even worse, there’s one who just doesn’t get me. I’ll never get through to that one no matter how hard I try.
I’ve buried a parent. Managed an estate. Juggled grief with the business of death and the business is still winning.
I’m aggressively saving for and simultaneously counting down to retirement but would also like to see the world.
I can’t remember if I took my daily medicine, even though I am still standing in the very spot at the bathroom counter where I take that medicine each morning.
The microwave died. So, we might as well just renovate the kitchen. We’ve replaced the roof and the HVAC. The house needs to be painted. Maybe it’s time to downsize.
I’m talking about hot flashes, hormones, and my risk of breast cancer. And pushing my husband to schedule his annual post-cancer check.
Our cat has been dead for four years, but I still hear her cat door swinging in the laundry room. Sometimes I call my husband by our dog’s name.
All I want to do on the weekend is walk our dog and sit in the yard and read. But then our neighbors inevitably decide that is the perfect time to run their blower.
I also want to climb mountains, float in salty seas, eat great food, and see new things. “They” don’t tell you how hard life will be. Nor how short it is. How fun. How surprising. And sometimes downright enchanting.
But right now, yeah, we’re in a shit storm.
On the “Handsome” podcast this week (if you don’t listen, you must!), Jane Fonda asked the hosts: “How do you stay hopeful in these times?”
Um, Franklin D. Roosevelt was president when Jane Fonda was born, so she has been through a lot. The Great Depression, multiple wars, the space age, the civil rights movement, Beatlemania, Studio 54, Area 51, Jazzercise, Cabbage Patch Kids, the digital age, the internet, September 11, a few more wars, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, iPhones, and The Bachelor.
So, if Jane is asking now – in this moment – about hope, maybe Barry is right.
We should panic.
But don’t worry, I already am. I always do.
Barry’s Thoughts:
If it seems like there are plenty of reasons to panic right now, it’s because there probably are. But as a person who was born in 1980, my response to that notion would be, “Yeah? What else is new?”
Because for people my age, there have been wire-to-wire reasons to panic since we were in diapers.
Baby Boomers love to talk about how they grew up with the threat of nuclear Armageddon hanging over their heads, as if that ever stopped being the case for kids in this country. We ’80s kids were hiding under our desks as well, you know. It was even more pointless for us, though, because if a desk couldn’t stop a 1950’s-era nuke, it sure as shooting wasn’t going to stop the planet killers we were pumping out in the Reagan years.
And in between nuclear attack drills, every once in a while, we would have a special day where we got to watch some monumental event happen live on TV. In our case, it was the Challenger explosion. That taught us at a young age that the grim specter of disaster can even invade something as joyous as the teacher wheeling in the TV cart.
Fast forward a few years, and we’re entering college just as the burgeoning internet was opening up an entirely new frontier in American prosperity. Now fast forward a few months, and all the CompSci students are reeling as the Dot Com bubble bursts, sending their entire futures into a tailspin. The rest of us thought we’d be OK, until a group of maniacs flew some planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, igniting both a global depression and a war that started our senior year and would continue long into our adulthood.
But first, graduation. Even in a job market that was kneecapped by wars and economic instability, we could at least scrape together a down payment on our first home after a few years of saving, right? Not if the one-two punch of the Great Recession and the Housing Bubble had anything to say about it. Did we panic then? No, because at that point we were holding down three jobs to cover the mortgage on a house we couldn’t sell because we were six figures underwater in it. There simply wasn’t time to panic.
But thanks to our steadfast resolve, we were able to make it through and finally have kids of our own. Kids who would learn very quickly how to fake their way through a Zoom class when the COVID pandemic pulled them out of classes and reduced one more aspect of their life to an interaction on a screen. Kids who would have their attention spans actively monetized by social media algorithms. Yet, still we didn’t panic (although we did try to limit screen time).
I’ll admit, things look pretty grim right now. Whether you want to call it a “war,” a “strategic military operation,” or “a distraction from the Epstein files,” the strikes against Iran and inevitable continuing retaliation are causing all sorts of chaos here and abroad. You can panic about it if you’d like, I suppose. I wouldn’t blame you. But those of us who grew up in the chaos will simply do what we’ve always done: Keep our heads down, push our panic aside, and prepare for the next giant disaster.
