The people I grew up with are the last of the baby boomers. Most of my oldest friends are sons of immigrants. That makes us prime examples of the American Dream. The quest for freedom, economic and political, was our Pablum. Our object lessons consisted of the mythologies of the old countries. Our characters were forged through the intensity of the cold war while being nourished off the post war glut of commercial goods. Our childhood was good, our parents succeeded through us. We are invincible.
Half a century later, we still grasp those early ideals as a lifeline of reassurance. The difference is the change in today’s sociopolitical landscape. Our parents’ feared nationalistic golems are long dead, the soviet menace has been defanged and our economy is reeling like a punch drunk boxer facing Tyson. Still, as a generation, we cannot be dominated. We saw the end of polio, whooping cough and tuberculosis. Medicine fixed all ills, chemistry made us indifferent to the rest. We drove the best vehicles, travelled with impunity to the farthest reaches of our imaginations, saw new worlds and experienced the unknown.
Today begins the end of our era. Fatalistic as this may sound, we are a shrinking demographic. Our parents are setting before us beyond the horizon while friends are contracting illnesses that should not have the temerity to even come nearby. Our invincibility is starting to show fractures along the edges. Injuries linger and aches morph into symptoms as the heart looks for new avenues to explore. My friends are succumbing to outrageous slings and arrows on all sides impelling me to reassess my physicality in an effort to stave of the inevitable. Our band of immigrant sons (and daughters) is condensing into a refined essence. A purified idealism that we attempt to pass on to our progeny and this is an expression of our faith.
Our common religion is based on tenets arrived at through our family experiences. We hold to these beliefs as a security blanket that we in turn pass on to our next generation. The faith derived from our experiences give us hope. We may show our mortality now, but we do not acknowledge that part of our humanity. Our conviction in the science behind us helps us to face the unexpected. Our devotion to those who made the great leap to bring us here causes us to continue the immigratory process. We endure because know it is possible to do so. We also impart this to our children because we know commitment to our experiences provides an indomitable confidence that can protect all who believe in it. I am a believer. I drink this Kool Aid of 50’s propaganda because I have experienced its successes. I believe it enough to endeavor to bring up a second generation in the face of a diminished national luster. I do it because my parents did more than this long ago. I do it because my friends do the same. We have faith in ourselves.
