2008: The Year We Became Our Grandparents

It's kind of weird knowing I've lived through a year that will be referenced by historians for ages. While 2008 will be remembered as the beginning of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, it could also be aptly titled "The 2nd Worst Year of the Bush Administration," being runner-up only to 2001.

I wholeheartedly agree with Larry Cohen, in his idea that 2008 is the year we tried to forget, just looking forard to 2009.

For me, though, 2008 is the year I became my grandparents, or at least began to understand them more fully. I understand their generation much better now, in 2 important ways:

Employment: I never thought that I would be so grateful for "only" having a job. I knew I'd be grateful when I got the job I wanted, but simply having employment was meaningless. Having a job was, for me and many like me, the logical result of having earned a college degree. There was nothing remarkable about this, it was a simple if/then statement: If I have a college degree, then I will have a job. There was nothing to be thankful for, since there was nothing extraordinary about it. For the past few months at work though, at least a couple of times a day, someone will say, "At least we have a job." This refrain usually comes as we're all complaining about our workload, and while we still complain just as much, that one sentence quickly puts our pithy plights into perspective.

Charity: I've always given nominal donations to charity out of societal obligation; it's the thing we're supposed to do. A big part of my apathy was that I truly felt I could not identify with those to whom I was giving. They were different, and we had nothing in common. Was this shallow? Yes. But I can't change the way I felt. Today, as financial institutions crumble, and investments can disintegrate into the digital zeros and ones by which they're buttressed, anyone and everyone can lose their entire savings overnight. "Cash equivalents" suddenly become pieces of paper; "fixed income" investments are suddenly more volatile than junk bonds.

I wish I could wrap this up by saying something optimistic like "We've had to suffer a lot, but we're better off for it." To quote Gladiator, "Is Rome worth one good man's life?" Is there no way for us to see our own shortcomings without so much suffering? Worse yet, even if we become more fiscally responsible and charitable, history is working against us: If history continues to repeat itself, doesn't that just mean we'll be the same fiscally irresponsible, apathetic society 80 years from now?