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Living in 2014

January 1st, 2014 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized

Tell the truth, Baby Boomers.

The first 40 years of your life you never once thought about living in the year 2014.

If you are a regular Boomer, self-focused and a bit morbid, you often did the math for the new millennium. “How old will I be in the Year 2000? Not all that old. Man, will I be ticked if I don’t make it.”

But how much further down the line did you look, back when you were 30 and just hoping/planning to be partying with Prince in 1999?

Maybe 2002, after Salt Lake City got the Winter Olympics. (Oops; that pertains only to sports fans). Maybe 2004 or 2008 because of presidential elections or the Beijing Olympics.

But along about 2009 or so … we all entered territory we never really considered, did we.

And now we’re in 2014?!?

What is this year supposed to be about, anyway? What is the theme? What is the focus? What is happening or supposed to happen?

Maybe the idea of a new century, a new millennium so focused Boomer Brains (pre-2000) that we never really considered the likelihood most of us were going to be around in this weird stretch of years.

Will 2013 be remembered for anything? Will 2014? Or 2015?

I suppose that’s good, if you subscribe to the “happy is the land that has no history” thing.

It’s just a weird time to be alive. Things are good … sorta. We have more information than ever, which is good, except when you drown in it. Science continues to make advances — though nearly every major medical study seems to contradict what we previous “knew” to be true (red meat, good for you!) … and if we last long enough whatever else we were told just this week will be overturned, too.

Doesn’t look like we will be living anywhere off the planet any time soon, so we’re stuck here. Does science fiction now focus on topics like … “and they all were bored sh*tless, for eternity, looking vainly for a website that would amuse them.”

The world continues to get smaller, and more and more people have been to many of the world’s exotic places. (I mean, we all have been to Samarkand and Katmandu and Marrekech by now, right? And seen the gorillas in Rwanda and the pandas in China and the penguins in Antarctica.)

Where are we going? Towards some sort of social media Armageddon, probably, where everyone knows the minute-by-minute activities of everyone else (or at least governments certainly do), and we all eventually seize up under the weight of Too Much Information.

But when will that happen? Sometime soon. But not in 2014.

Because we have no idea what is supposed to happen in 2014. We never know the future, of course, but 2014 is Just Plain Weird to be living in if you started life in the 20th century.

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1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Judy Long // Jan 10, 2014 at 8:58 PM

    right you are as usual

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