Chickens

"Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road (or world) is rapidly agin'.
So get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a changin'".

I remember in my youth how I revered those words of Bob Dylan. How I was so certain that my parents' generation could simply not "understand" how we, the young, had the secret to creating the ideal society. How we were going to solve all its problems; how simple the solutions were and how it was just a question of will.

Now, in my superannuated years, I wonder if and how the young would dismiss my belief that the ideal is unattainable and that solving one problem inevitably creates others--that the human condition is such that life is a matter of trade-offs rather that definitive "solutions".

Have my chickens come home to roost?