I heard a woman today on the radio, she said she was thirty-five years old and that, from her perspective, virtually all young people today are feeling heavy, burdened by some un-named anxiety…some existential angst. 

Ah yes! 

I remember it well…the existential angst I mean. I grew up with it, missiles and giant jet bombers and constant nuke testing by the U.S. …or should I say US…and the Russians. (The Chinese weren’t into nukes yet, they were still melting down woks to produce steel for export so they could afford to make some.) 

Then there was the great Communist paranoia; the arrests of American writers and intellectuals, politicians, anyone who had ever said a kind word about a Russian. 

There was a hit tv show that impressed me as a kid called, ‘I Was A Communist for the FBI’. 

And, of course, there was the usual parade of spineless-position-seekers taking advantage of the fear rampant in the society. 

We had the Cuban missile crisis, the shooting down of the Korean Airlines passenger jet, Boris and Natasha, the arms race and the space race and racial violence and graphic violence and the fuckin’ Vietnam War (which is known as the American War in Vietnam…natch) and yes, 

we, too, had a president who kept wandering in and out of a parallel universe. 

WHEW! 

So how did we get here? We should have been dead in the sixties, certainly the seventies and ABSOLUTEY by the nineties. The threat of war was constant. Kruschev banged his shoe on his desk at the UN and shouted ‘We’ll bury you!’ There were incidents and accidents and daily close shaves. 

During the Cuban missile crisis, launch officers on both sides, American and Russian, erroneously thought that they had been given orders to launch but decided to defy them. So, twice nuclear war was avoided by insubordination. 

WHEW! again. 

Yes, we have been that close. 

But here we are, still bitching about the weather and the smoke and getting old and a myriad of other worldly wonders. The point is  WE’RE STILL HERE! So it seems to me that humanity has collectively changed it’s mind about self-annihilation and I suspect that we will be around for quite awhile longer, though certainly not without tribulation. 

So relax. 

Now, I don’t think the problem for the young is worry about being vaporized in a man-made sunspot…what I think they must be dealing with is more like utter bewilderment about what kind of personal moral compass to create, or to embrace, in order to get some kind of footing in a world where everything is spinning, happening, changing, all the time, faster and faster. A world where to express belief in anything leaves one open to ridicule from other ‘believer’ factions. And I’m not just talking about religion or politics ( although they are far and away the main culprits) but damn near every aspect of living is being called into questions as to it’s own authenticity. Is it what it says it is?… is it what it appears to be?…are the two of those the same? 

And truth, or what we used to call fact, is being actively challenged by the presentation of alternate truths, or what we used to call lies. 

This is truly a mindfucker so it does not surprise me that many young people feel they are living on the razors edge. Many may, I suppose, choose the example of the president of the United States and engage in the pursuit of wealth at all cost by methods fair or foul. But many more, I think, will see the chaos, eschew the fear and do their best to move their little part of the world to a place where what is real is apparent and what is unreal is obvious. Really folks, when you take a step back, bullshit is always obvious. 

Truth, by definition, remains true in spite of obfuscation, compulsion or delusion and will eventually rise into view. 

And we, having decided to stick around and work on it for a few more millennia, will muddle through. 

Time is on our side…yes it is.