Where Are We Now?

Occasionally you can feel a sense of the passage of time. There have been many incidents that placed bookmarks in the pages history so we could remember where we were then. As you age certainly there are more marks to remember simple because you lived that long.

Think back over the past decade at the incident stands out the brightest. I suppose for many of us that would be the tragedy of 9/11 event. For others it could be the election of America’s first African-American President. Even though there were many more notable events these two stands out quite vividly.

Go back to the decade of the 90s, what stands out the most? Perhaps the scandal of our President with what’s her name stands out? During the 80s we had a boom in the housing market with interest rates as high as 19%. The 70s was the dance fever, disco, and a shifting of racial currents after the turbulent 60s. Of course the 60s was the assassination of the Kennedy brothers, MLK, and several civil rights leaders, along with the Vietnam War. This was certainly an age of revolution against the status-quo establishment.

To go back any further would precede most of you, but I think the point has been made about how time seems to have many notable bookmarks that keeps us conscious of its movement. I am one of the baby-boomers of the 40s with the last World War and my parents could go back even further to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Each decade has at least one shinning bookmark.

As we get ready to enter the second decade of the 21st Century I wonder what’s in store for us. Currently we are in one of the greatest financial recessions since the Great Depression. Could a recovery out of these bad times be a coming bookmark?

Will we enter into a new age of green technology essentially ousting the combustive engines that have been killing our planet for over a hundred years? Will we finally get sick enough of partisan politics and let the politicians know whom they work for? Will people finally wake up and began to understand that we are the ones that must bring in the change we want to experience, otherwise we must rely upon the darker days to bookmark this time for us.

Time and history are not all that particular about what they record. Whatever we give is recorded and stored indelibly in their annals. On the other hand as conscious being we have the ability to look ahead and plant seeds that can grow into good things. The seeds we are planting today will produce the fruit that will be gathered tomorrow. That brings a question to mind; what type of seeds are we planting?

In this day of rapid technological advancements certainly our society should be more transparent? If only we open our eyes we would see what goes on behind the scenes much better than we could see before. The days of back-door politics and under-handed dealings should be out. Devious people used to do their dastardly deeds in private and the people were forced to deal with their stuff. It doesn’t have to be that way now.

We shouldn’t continue fall for the stranglehold the gas companies have over us. We should find a way to end the political wars we are fighting for the interest of some pie-in-the-sky, deep, secret, hidden agenda. We should spend our available funds in order to re-build our infrastructure rather than spending one more dime on anyone’s war? We could easily calculate the total daily cost of fighting both wars we are currently fighting and see what this country could do with that much money by putting it back into our system. We must stop the bleeding before we can rebuild.

Think about this!

Where in the hell are we?

If we are not planting seeds that we know will produce good fruit then we are vulnerable to the dark days that will certainly bookmark this very time we are passing through. Do we need another tragedy to remember the second decade of the 21st century? Dare we consciously do something positive that could be remembered for the next few hundred years?

Certainly the fact that we elected our first African-American President will be remembered for a long time, but the jury is still out on what his legacy will become.

We can come together as the people of these United States and finish a great mark in history as was proclaimed by the crafters of our nation. Or, we can place just another dark stain on history as we have done in the past. We can come together as people and do what is right and decent for the sake of the country and for our future, or, we can continue to do as we have always done, business as usual. What will it be folks; the call is ours.

Where are we now?

Perhaps a better question is:

Where do we want to be?