During the course of my baby'boomer lifetime, I have seen some changes; some of them I am actually starting to comprehend.
Now I look back on it all and find myself wondering about some things, but quite sure about some other things.
Several years ago, my wife and I spent some vacation time on the island of Maui, in the great state of Hawaii. While driving one afternoon down the western slope of Hale'akala volcano, we happened upon a memorial to a great man named Sun Yat-sen.
In his lifetime, during the early 20th century--1911, Sun lead many of his countrymen in a revolution that deposed the old monarchy of their country--the Chinese Qing dynasty. But before that happened, he had spent some time in Hawaii; that's why there's as statue of him there.
At the base of Sun Yat-sen's memorial a quote from him is carved in the stone, and this is what is said:
LOOK INTO THE NATURE OF THINGS
Ever since I saw that, I have been working that pearl of wisdom into my way of living as much as I can. And this principle of living and learning has been not only a motivation for me toward acquiring useful knowledge, but also a source of great joy and satisfaction.
This principle is expanded in the Proverbs of the Bible: Understanding is a fountain of life to one who has it. Proverbs 16:22.
Now this may seem like a philosophical idea, but it is really very productive in the living of real life. Here's a nuts n' bolts example:
In 1992, when I was still a young man of 41, working as a carpenter to provide for our three children, and for my wife who had not yet become a nurse, and for our household, I took a job with a construction company remodeling (a refurb job) an old K-Mart. My job was to tear old stuff out from around the inside perimeter of the store and replace it with a newer style of retail display.
I had been visiting K-Marts ever since I was a teenager in the 1960's. So I had been seeing those retail structures for most of my life. But to look behind the facade, into the structure, and then to reconstruct the structure based on newer, more modern components--this work experience held a strange satisfaction for me, as well as a source of income for a season of our life.
Working on that K-Mart was more than a paycheck; it was a joy to behold as the various phases of reconstruction unfolded beneath my hands and before my eyes.
Look into the nature (or structure) of things!
Many years have passed; now I'm looking back on it all. Part of the outcome from this reflection will be a novel that I am now researching and writing. It is a story that takes place during the time of my youth; it has become a cathartic process for reconciling the difference between what I thought I knew then and what I now know about that turbulent period of my g-generation's growing up.
Ours was the generation whose maturing was said to be delayed because Dr. Spock wrote a book about child care that--as some have judged it--convinced our mothers to spoil us.
While there may be an element of truth to that judgement, I have noticed in my conversations with some people lately that there is category of folks in our boomer generation who were definitely not spoiled:
Those guys and gals who fulfilled their duty to our country by going to fight the war in Vietnam--they found themselves in a situation where they had to grow up in one hell of a hurry.
What I am seeing now is, in my g-generation, there was a great divide between: Them that went, and them that didn't.
While I was college freshman in 1969, trying to figure out what life was all about, and marching against the war, those guys who who went to 'Nam were required--and yeah I say unto thee--forced to figure out how to keep life pumping through their bodies and the bodies of their buddies who fought with them.
Those soldiers who went over there had to grow up a lot quicker than I did.
I did not go to Vietnam. My lottery number in 1970 was 349, so I literally "lucked out" of it.
During that time, a time when I was stepping lightly through ivory-tower lala land, our soldiers on the other side of the world were trudging through jungles, heavy-laden with weapons and survival gear. While I was privileged to be extending my literacy skills, they were committed to learning how to kill the enemy before he kills "us."
Now it turns out my research about the '60's is swirling around two undeniable maelstroms of socio-political showdown: civil rights and the Vietnam war.
So, in my project of looking into the nature of things in the 1960's, I am learning about that war and how it came to be a major American (undeclared) war instead of just a civil war between Vietnamese.
One thing I have found is that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara undertook a similar project in 1965. When he was in the thick of it all--as one of the best and brightest industrial leaders of that age, having been recruited as an insider in the White House, then calling the shots on major events, wielding incredible military power on the other side of the planet, in the heat of the moment and in the fog of war, he found himself wanting to know. . .
how the hell did this happen? how the hell did we get here?
McNamara's question lead to a .gov-commissioned research project, paid for on our taxpayer dime, and ultimately made public by the primary researcher of that undertaking, a former Marine Lt. Col. named Daniel Ellsberg.
Look deep into it. In Ellsberg's case he looked deep into 7000 pages of military documentation, starting in the 1940's and going all the way through Tonkin Gulf in 1964.
Look into the nature of things.
I'll let you know in another year or two--when the book is done-- what my search dredges up from the streets and battlefields of our g-generation's search to find meaning and fulfillment, and maybe even a little justice and mercy thrown in.
But one thing I want to say, now, to THEM THAT WENT:
Although things did not turn out the way we had intended, there isn't much in this life that actually does end up like we thought it would.
You went and did what the USA asked, or compelled you, to do, while many of us were trying to pull you back to stateside.
Thank you for your service. We'll need many more of your stripe before its all over with.
Glass half-Full
Listen: Boomer's Choice
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