The Weight of Time

Not long ago, Pádraig Ó Tuama posted in an email (Poetry Unbound?) a musing about time, and in it he included a poem he'd written, "The Weight of Time." One of the stanzas irked me, and continues to irk me:

1993 was a terrible year for me, an old guy said.
I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t born, came a reply.
The speaker got annoyed,
but the young guy said,
you’ve had your time —
my generation’s being destroyed.

First, the line "you've had your time." Um, no. Anyone who is alive has whatever time there is. We all only get this one span of time. Of precious life. You've had your time? What will that young guy feel when he gets to be seventy, eighty?

Certainly, too, you could look back to a similar "young guy" in the 1960s—who could easily have been the older speaker—and he also might well have said, "My generation's being destroyed." In this country, it has been true for many, throughout our history. The current generations might consider themselves lucky that they don't have a Civil War, a World War, a Vietnam, to get conscripted into, if they had perspective. There are many ways of surviving the odds.

Then there are the young people who complain about older folks who are remaining in their houses, now paid off, rather than moving somewhere smaller and letting young families take them over. But when I look at options around here, we'd have to pay more than we could get for our house, and for something smaller. Why should we do that? Haven't we paid our dues, earned some peace? Shouldn't we all get to be where want to be—assuming we've made it there—until it's no longer viable? Is it us "boomers'" fault that humans keep procreating, keep filling the planet? (And I say that as someone who did not.)

Of course of course, we're all egocentric, invested in our own stories, our own pains and joys, and we think we are the most important. And maybe that's also what I'm objecting to: that selfishness. Aren't we all in this together? Apparently not.

Though part of me thinks it's the media that are creating all the bellyache. That people aren't really as generationally divided, as dyspeptic, as selfish, as the "pundits" make up stories about. Because they've got to sell their papers. Which doesn't mean people don't believe the stories they're told. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sad. I wish critical thinking was actually taught in the schools.

Anyway, I'm keeping my house. I will do my best to stay healthy as long as I can, another ten, maybe twenty, but most likely not thirty years. Soon enough, the newest generation of young adults, whatever it calls itself, will have a crack at all I own. Most of it, they'll toss out. The house, though. I do hope some young family, someday, falls in love with it and makes it their own. Just not yet.

I know I'm being a crank here, but honestly. "You've had your time"? That's such bullshit.