Was It Always Like This?

Talk about depressing. How many different things are there to worry about in the world these days? Whether it’s racist egomaniacs running for nominations (and winning), people gunning down strangers in the streets or at schools, people blowing up other people in markets or at airports . . .

Sometimes there just feels like so many ways in which the world is falling apart. So my question today is to you readers who are fifty-five and older. People a clear generation ahead of me. Was it always like this? Is it just that I’m getting to the point in my life where I start to actually pay attention to everything happening more that I’m seeing all the bad? Because I feel like I’ve always been tapped in to what’s going on around me, and so a big part of me wants to say this is all new.

But then again, World War II. World War I. Vietnam. There are plenty of time periods I didn’t live through. Does living now compare to the feeling of living then? I remember growing up during the Cold War. I was seriously concerned that the world was going to end by nuclear missiles at any time. It kept me up some nights. We had bomb scares at school and bomb drills. Did I just pass them off more easily than I can now?

I wonder if some of it isn’t due to how prevalent cameras and video cameras are these days, and how well connected we all are. In seconds, what’s happening on the other side of the world can be appearing on my screen here in the library at work, and so each time something happens, I hear about it and know about it. Would things have felt different in World War II if there had been the same interconnectedness back then? We can only speculate.

But like I said: what I’d really like to know is how things felt to people living in earlier times. Not sure if I have seventy or eight-year-olds reading this, but I’d love as much input as I can get.

In the meantime, my thoughts and prayers go out to the people in Brussels (including the three Mormon missionaries who were injured in the bombings) and Turkey. I don’t know what we need to do as a globe to stop ISIS, but whatever it is, it seems like it needs to happen soon.