Feeling Change

I recently got an email from a long-time friend and former colleague, about the generally ugly state of things in the U.S. He finished with the following two short sentences.

I no longer recognize our country. It has become totally foreign to me.

Let me share with you my response. I wrote to him the following, edited slightly for clarity:

I wonder if that doesn't happen to most people who live as long as we have lived? I'm sure it happened to my father. He was born in 1887 and lived to be 84.

My father died in a world almost entirely different from the one in which he grew up. His boyhood spent in a world of candles and oil lamps, no cars, planes, or electronics of any sort, no antibiotics, little anesthesia. When he was young people routinely died of things like tetanus, pneumonia, appendicitis, whooping cough. If you had a toothache, the tooth was pulled.

Feeling our country is foreign may be yet another aspect of the aging process, a process that isn't much fun. Hang in there, outliving the bastards is the best revenge.

I share your concern that the U.S. is in decline, overripe, beginning to show signs of rot. How much of this is real and how much is just the observer (me) growing old I cannot be certain.

To which I'd add, upon further reflection, that I've spent a lot of time overseas. The DrsC have visited over 100 countries, and lived overseas for a year.

The U.S. has changed in ways I don't always like but I still feel "at home" when the plane lands at LAX or SFO or DEN, when the ship docks in San Pedro or Ft. Lauderdale. Perhaps it helps to spend time in places truly "foreign" to be reminded that the U.S. isn't yet foreign, just changed from our youth.