Dear W.*,
Life is going to be tough again, just as soon as this is over. And the most useful thought we can hold when all hell cuts loose again is that we are not members of different generations, as unlike, as some people would have us believe, as Eskimos and Australian Aborigines. We are all so close to each other in time that we should think of ourselves as brothers and sisters. I have several children–seven, to be exact–too many children for an atheist, certainly. Whenever my children complain about the planet to me, I say, “Shut up! I just got here myself. Who do you think I am–Methuselah? You think I like the news of the day any better than you do? You’re wrong.”
We are all experiencing more or less the same lifetime now.
Kurt Vonnegut, graduation address at Fredonia College, 1978.
.bp
*W. meaning World