Aging is something we do from the minute we are born but the emotion of memories get stronger, the older we get. Were we so young and naive when we have much physical strength to not realize how life is truly a vapor?
I get pretty strong in my emotions at the first of the year as another year has passed.
I think of all the crap and good times we have been through , through the years. We boomers have had it rough with all the republican power players during our working years. I can only think of one period of feeling OK..and that was under Bill Clinton. The rest of the time was breath holding on jobs, security, etc.
With the passing of Phil Everly, I thought yesterday, that it seemed just like a breath ago, I first listened to the Everly Brothers. A flood of memories rushed back to me baby sitting while playing ." Cathy's Clown". I thought of all my firsts in life. I thought of my young marriage, our son being born, the working days of a single parent, the bad decisions and choices, along with the good ones. It all seemed like just a few moments ago. I look at the photos of the young girl with dreams and vision and the disappointments as well. I get a notice everyday, of another classmate who has passed. I wonder what they stood for in later years and did they change or remain the same as in school. Life and circumstances changes people but the character is generally still embedded in the person. I always wanted to make a difference in life.
I really don't know when that started but I was well aware of the injustices at a very young age.
I don't know that I feel any different in my thoughts as I did when I was 18. I don't know when I picked up the hammer of justice but I am quite sure I had it at 18 when I was writing letters to congress critters back then. I remember writing my vet cousins and friends as they battled in Vietnam. I remember visiting them in hospitals after they came home. I remember having vets come home and stop by the house and us talking. I knew my husband was typical of so many combat vets when we married.
I did not get really that active in pushing and taking it to the highest level until I hit 42.
My passion for change is real. My wanting people to be treated kindly is real. My aggravation and temper is real. My patience is thin. I started out normal I think. I played and had music running through me like water. I tried to live life sober minded and was sick a lot in my younger days and it was always going back to Graves Disease.
I started writing songs when I was 7 years old. My 8 year is doing the same. I will be 64 come June and I wonder and actually worry about the future. I see people around me fading. I see myself going to bed earlier and rising early. I reflect a great deal and wonder like many our age how much change can happen or will happen and do I or did I make a difference ? I wonder. I want to have anothe 63 years to push for a better world, but I know I am only a few years from 70 and that seems really old in my mind.
I have been blessed to push through some of the hardships and disasppointments but sometimes I wonder how long that will continue.
What are people thinking ? They say life is what you make it. I don't think so. I think life is what happens and how one deals with it depends on their own ability to get past some things. That gets harder as we get older. Why can't people be honest with themselves and know life is short and be kind to one another? Money is required to live and should not be such a struggle, but it doesn't make you happy, I am told. No matter how much one acquires in life, it does not give you a longer life, nor does it make for a more productive human. Why do people think they are gonna live forever and screw so many out of things that they earned or deserve. Things like a living wage, a decent home? A chance to succeed? A good education ? Who are these people who think they can push other to the sidelines to watch? I thought when I was 18 not of getting older but of treating people like I wanted to be treated. I started talking back ( which got me in lots of trouble ) as long as I can remember.
I looked at Mitt Romney's mansions yesterday and wondered.. who is this kind of person who causes so much distress by not being happy in his fortune but listening to people like the Koch's who have more than most every othe person in America. Do they think they will live forever? Why don't people live and let live? Why judge? Why bully gays and lesbians? Why did the Bush family cause so much harm and bring out the worst in people? WHY ??????
I wake up, get a cup of coffee and look at my child sleeping. I see my older children with the exception of my 43 year just waking to reality of life being a vapor. They are lost in their own world of thinking they have all the time in the world. I was sick yesterday and whatgodmade dropped by and saw me and while talking to her little one, who is in residential treatment told me they did nothing at the mental facility but play x box. I was sicker to hear that and made a note to bring that situation up to DC Koller who has challenged Rich Nugent and is an ADA expert. That little boy and whatgodmade deserves better and there should be some sort of pet therapy, not just warehousing.
My question was , Who feels this way? The question is who feels they won't have enough time to make the world a better place and feels they failed in so many ways as they years keep creeping up? Who understands the process of aging, when people can so easily abuse you by taking retirement? Who puts those who have worked and fought all their lives in such vulerable situations? Who understands this and have we done enough to make the younger activists understand, We too, thought we had conquered the major fights in our youth, only to fight old and new ones again.
I do so want my kids to have it as good as some of had it and most of us had it hard but we had more opportunity for change without losing friends, family for our views.
Racism is in full force. Sexism is front and center and the crazies ARE in charge of the country. I am not depressed but I am a realist and I see too much happening bringing us down and Occupy was a good thing.
Where is the hatbasket because we sure seem to be going to Hell in it. Did you read Grayson's diary on here? Oh my !!! 2014 is the year things can really bring change.. If we don't get 2014 right... then I really am afraid.
2014...Every activist able should be working to get rid of this insanity State by State.
Happy New Year folks. We got a lot to do. I am talking mostly to you young folks. We old folks are older and still trying but you have got to understand..the time is now and if not us, who? If not now...when? I want to relax sometime and sit and watch sunsets before I walk on and I want to awake just one morning without worrying about bills, injustice, trying to figure it all out and feel accomplished as I shell a few peas on a back porch swing, like my grandparents did. It should not be an accomplishment to just have a roof over your head. We have been had. The inequality is overwhelming. It is not just blacks, hispanics, american indians, ...it is all of who are not corporations. We are being dumped on big time and we matter not.
I used to believe in this song.. I just don't know anymore.
When?