Excellent rant from a Millenial to GenX and Boomers

[turtlerescue1]

15. Humans are imperfect, ALL of us.

BUT

Life IS a becoming aware process, some of us(myself included) can be just walking along a path, and fall over the same log, repeatedly. Until one day as you are lying on your face noticing the weeds and bushes have grown since your last trip over that log, and you wonder what you could have done differently. You are not in that place yet, don't worry it shows up.

My nephew a GenXer came in one day and said...you were this, and we are that.

We weren't born with erasers on our heads. The best any of us can do is follow where our hearts lead us. I was 13 when JFK was killed. A few years prior, the Bay of Pigs, and there we were close to a SAC base, and having bomb drills in school, getting under our desks-like that was going to help. I remember Kent State. I remember a democrat who had gone to Florida to the Primary there, and gotten tear gassed. I remember day after day of Senior Pictures on the front page of the local paper, kids I grew up with, that in the same week they got their diplomas got that letter from Uncle Sam "Greeting and Salutations" now coming home in body bags. I remember Selma, Alabama. I remember race riots. I remember inequality. I remember that first MLK birthday after his murder, standing in the rain, all seven of us trying to keep our candles lit. I remember the big marches in SF, I walked with the guys who had just got back from SE Asia. I remember the Chicano movement. Walking arm in arm with our elbows locked, not thinking for a moment it would do one drop of good, but still it was on our plate, and complacency and apathy were not exactly doing much to change anything. And I remember working for $1.85 an hour at a large business after graduation. AND I wasn't even out of my teens yet!

No one gets handed a bed of roses, an easy life with fair choices. It can make you bitter, but what good is bitter? We sang, we made jokes-because all of us were sick of crying and being angry.

Look for the poetic justice. When Reagan was King in California, he closed all the mental institutions. Two years later I had this IDEA, in order to have a house on the beach near Morro Bay, would take the training and work in the hospital from the criminally insane.
So decided to see if I'ld fit. The first day..."became aware" what Raygun's action really did, the first persons out on the street were the Developmentally Delayed. Homeless.
It took a few decades but when Reagan was diagnosed, pure poetic justice.

I know my generation TRIED to change the world to make it warmer and kinder. We actually only got a few tiny steps. At least with a diploma NOW you don't get your draft number to go fight in a war that the Pentagon never intended to win. At least you don't get sent to a war and have to be 21 to vote. AND just maybe pot will finally be at least as legal as a beer.

Make up your mind to change what you can, find like-minds and pursue what it is your heart and soul and mind believes in.

Let me close this heartfelt rant: The only reason I ever put on that white uniform was a bet with another nephew, a case of Colt 45 tall cans, to last six weeks working in a nursing home. Weakest stomach ever. One morning I was assigned a guy exactly my age, CP or MD, strapped across the chest into his w/c. As I cleared a space on his table so he could eat his breakfast, on his nightstand was this pine cone owl, under it was written:
"Lilfe, No one said it would be easy." If a giant hand had come out of the sky and slapped me across my face, I wouldn't have been more humbled. Oh yeah, ended up spending over 18 years in nursing.

Be Brave. Be Strong. AND find a reason to keep laughing.