Perspective.
From a friend~
Perspective.
Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday. 50 million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.
On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, the World GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy.
When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. And don’t try to catch your breath.
On your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war.
At 50, the Korean War starts. 5 million perish.
At 55 the Vietnam War begins and doesn’t end for 20 years. 4 million people perish in that conflict.
On your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, should have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening.
When you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends.
Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? When you were a kid in 1985 and didn’t think your 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. And how mean that kid in your class was. Yet they survived through everything listed above.
Perspective is an amazing art, refined as time goes on, and enlightening like you wouldn’t believe. Let’s try and keep things in perspective."
= new reply since forum marked as read
*THAT* is great! I am thankful you shared it. 
and at 18 ran away from home in CA and went as far as the train would go to end up in Savannah, GA. She was also a single parent (my mother) born during the depression.
The women of that generation fought for education; my grandmother finished HS, but her father refused to let her attend college. My grandmother insisted that her daughters went to college. She was politically active her whole life (suffrage, women candidates, equal pay). She also insisted on working, in defiance of her husband of the time. The societal battles were every bit as difficult as the world wars.
I always admired my grandmother's resilience and positive view of life.
Thanks for the perspective.
& with other epidemics that occurred so long ago, we forget that at that time air travel was not available. With air travel it makes disease much easier to spread when someone can travel from one part of the world to another in only a few hours!
I remember during the Cuban missile crisis. When President Kennedy made that announcement, we all thought we were going to die & that it most likely would occur the next day! And it was mostly because JFK was such an intelligent man along with his brother Bobby, that the world didn't end or propel us into a nuclear war!!
We can't say that now. Even though Fauci seems very intelligent & reasonable, we can't say the same about others in the top levels of govt!!
