Imagine Having Been Born In 1905... And All Your Life It Doesn't Fucking Stop. The Great War, The Spanish

Imagine having been born in 1905... And all your life it doesn't fucking stop. The Great War, the Spanish Flu, and then you go out of your mind for 7 years. Everyone is traumatised and nothing matters. Then another crash. And then the rise of fascism, and the War to end all Wars didn't and it's 1945 and you're just about still there. You may have fought or ferried the boys from Dunkirk or sabotaged the Nazi occupiers or worked in the factories and put out fires during the Blitz and you're lucky to be alive, because not all your friends made it. But you are and finally, fucking finally, it stops. It stops. You are tough as nails and you can put that strength to work into building something and you do, and people have cars and can buy icecream and you have a pension fund and the kids have money of their own and no nightmares.

I want that for us. I so want that for us. I want to be the generation that has seen fucking everything and is like a MRSA bug and unfazed and when that Cheeto finally dies, I want us to. Plant the gardens and clean the seas because we can and we want to and we remember some joy, some time of trust even when it got broken and we can say to the 20 somethings "let us show you what we can build, how it can feel."

And maybe Gen beta will take it all for granted like the boomers did, but we can give Gen Z and Alpha some peace because we, and Gen Z and Alpha have seen the Dark Times and fuck that noise.