Cornucopia / Cynthia Dewes
Remember, no matter where we are, God is still in charge
When I was a kid, the first day of school in the fall was really a big deal for me. As an only child, and being a social person, I craved the attention and interaction of being with other children. And living outside of town didn’t lend itself to daily contact with others.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved being an “only” because the advantages were greater than the disadvantages. I could observe and listen to the grownups talking about events, people and life in general more or less unobserved. I was kind of a third adult in the arrangement, with the added responsibilities and perks of being the oldest child, so to speak.
Another factor at the time was the certainty of things. School always followed Labor Day, and continued more or less until Memorial Day. The long summer vacation was possible because moms usually did not work outside the home, and there were few single moms because divorce was frowned on except for infidelity or some other egregious reason.
Besides that, the economic prospects for a single mom were very few because most women were not educated or trained for much except housework or baby-sitting. And most men had jobs with companies offering long-term employment with decent wages, health benefits and retirement income, thus making the stay-at-home mom possible.
Another certainty was that the government was benevolent, looking out for us and our welfare with the Food and Drug Administration checking our food and the Department of the Interior keeping our forests pristine, for example. We didn’t worry about the health of our environment or our finances or whatever concerns came up. And we always thought our country was not only justified in its actions, but even noble and inspiring to other nations.
It seems to me that all this certainty, or rigidity as some might call it, resulted from the traumas of the Great Depression followed by the devastation of World War II. People were anxious for stability in their lives, for comfort and security for themselves and their families. They even elected as president the general who led us to victory in the war. He was a proven winner.
Today we seem to have swung in the other direction. For some reason, naïve optimism has been replaced by paranoid suspicion. We don’t trust the government, and we don’t expect employers to be fair, let alone benevolent. Everyone is out for number one, and maybe more if they have families.
As a result, personal relationships are hard to maintain and most of us feel insecure in some way, financial or emotional or whatever. We tend not to look forward to the future, except to think it can only be better than the past. We hope our children will be better off than we are, but wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t happen.
As I’ve ranted on before, I think much of this comes from the decline of religion in our society. We seem to have no moral arbiter to keep us on the right track anymore. I also think that this accounts for the outpouring of admiration for the late Sen. John McCain, who personified this very quality of moral certainty.
Whether we’re Christian or not, the admonition to love others as ourselves is not only a kindly statement, but also practical advice. It works. There must be a solution between mindless optimism and pending gloom. Let’s give it a try.
(Cynthia Dewes, a member of St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Greencastle, is a regular columnist for The Criterion.) †