All the Heroes of My Younger Years Are Dropping Like Flies

[MineralMan]

Now, it's Jesse Jackson. Every week, a few more reach the ends of their lives. At 80, I'm also old, but those folks were older than I was throughout my life.

They were all part of my life, though. They were news. They were bucking the status quo. They were heroes.

Now, they seem larger than life. Then, they were just the activists we were noticing.

Our parents and other elders, at the time, paid no attention to them. That makes me wonder: Who am I not paying attention to right now? Who are we looking past when we should be looking directly at them?

So many are gone, but that's the way of things. The older you get, the fewer of your heroes are still around.

Still, the enemies of those days are mostly gone, too, so there is that.

Pay attention to the young people with loud voices. They matter, whether you recognize them or not.

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. Ya know. back in my twenties, I said to my sig other that, there will come a time when all my rock heros will be dying

around me. And that has certainly come to pass. I'm just glad I am still kicking.

[Srkdqltr]

2. Im happy to be here to see??? Now that doesn't sound right.

As a woman of 85 years that thought tickled me , in a way.

[Old Crank]

3. An interesting question.

Who has the torch been passed to? AOC?
Doesn’t have to be one torch.

[MineralMan]

4. I think we don't know until later.

Often, we're standing too close to see the giants clearly.

[Old Crank]

6. I think we should be seeing some.

I'm 75 next month. I've been aware of Jackson since I was at least 25. Many of the giants I grew up with are 10 to 25 years older than I am. I would have expected to hear about people in and around 50 years old by now. AOC is a bit on the young side for my calculations.
Not that she isn't heading for giant status. Obama fits my age range for the cohort after the group from our era. Did we get complacent and feel that everything was going smoothly. Did we feel that enough was done? Or have we torn down too many for minor issues and felt they were pure enough?

[MineralMan]

7. I wish I knew the answers to your questions.

Sadly, I have to say that I don't.

[Old Crank]

9. So do I.

[malaise]

5. Great OP

And yes these days I literally have to decide which funeral to attend.

[leftstreet]

8. DURec

[Warpy]

10. What's really sad is having friends and family slowly go dark

Emails taper off and then stop and you just know that someone you have been separated from by time and/or distance has now gone completely.

My mother counted the loss of her friends by the Xmas cards that no longer arrived, the notes inside them disappearing first. Different generation, different means, same steady loss of one's past as fewer and fewer people remember who we all used to be when we were young enough to be full participants in the world.

It's also hard to lose our storytellers, harder still to realize most of the [ep[;e in this country are responding to the news with "Who?" because s/he was most productive before they were born. To us, it was yesterday. To them, it's "Who?"

And so it goes.

[MineralMan]

11. And so has it always gone.

Mostly, we remember our own generation and the previous one. The next generation is doing its thing. I knew one great-grandparent and know the children of my siblings children now. Five generations, but the only ones I know well are my own and my parents'.

It's difficult to maintain close contact beyond those, and maybe the next one, if you have had offspring.

Things are always changing. there are almost no WWII veterans left alive now. The ones who are, we rarely encounter. Vietnam veterans are in their 70s and 80s now. The next generations will remember us about the same as we remember our WWII relatives, and then it all slips away.

That's how it goes, sadly.