Notes from my Knapsack 12-5-19

Notes from my Knapsack 12-5-19

Jeff Gill

 

I saw the decade end

____

 

In just a few weeks, the decade will end.

 

It was the . . . wow. We still haven't quite figured out what to call this stretch. Thankfully, not the World War I era, which was the work-around a hundred years ago.

 

The first decade we tried to call "the Oughts" which frankly did not catch on, but nothing better rose up to replace it. The Zeros? Nah, doesn't work for me, either.

 

But the Teens? That's a demographic, or a cover band. We just don't have our decade nomenclature really worked out, which is embarrassing.

 

Another embarrassing thing is the social media query that's gone around asking what you've done with the last decade. It makes sense, like using New Year's week as a time to review the year past, to take this month and look back over the . . . yeah. This last ten year period from 2010 through 2019, the Teen-ish decade.

 

What's hard to read for some of us is how much some have accomplished. Completed advanced degrees, given birth to children, built additions onto their homes, received a Rhodes Scholarship, that sort of thing. Like a decadal Christmas letter (note to self: work on Christmas letter to family and friends).

 

Some of us are happy to report we have survived the past era, more or less. We're still here, okay? But I'm more than willing to admit that there are things I dreamt of, or hoped for, or just planned to do in the last nine or ten years that didn't happen. Reading online that many did all of that and more can be a bit of a downer.

 

On the other hand, most of us low achievers haven't posted anything, so it's not like on social media platforms we're looking at a true random sample. If you have something to brag about, you're motivated to post your accomplishments; if you went to prison for life six years ago, I doubt you're posting a thing.

 

Leaving the rest of us somewhere between achievement and incarceration to ask: how was the past decade, anyhow? Obama's two terms and the start of Trump's first as President; we've moved into the future projected by "Blade Runner" which opened proclaiming "November 2019" as the unimaginable yet to come. Which is now here.

 

Thirty years ago, my wife and I were childless, and came over to discover Granville's candlelight walking tour back when Oese Robinson's lifestyle was still a museum, heard oboes in St. Luke's, and she hadn't yet directed the handbell choir at First Presbyterian. In a few weeks, I'd be pulled into the excavation and preservation of the Burning Tree Mastodon, soon thirty years re-discovered here in Licking County on Dec. 12.

 

Ten years ago, our son was a Cub Scout when girls were not invited to join; he was a student at the still new-ish intermediate school out in the countryside, and wondering what the middle and high school would be like. Now he's approaching college graduation. That's his achievement, but it might have to do for us as parents.

 

What has your decade been like? It's about to end, and we will soon be into the Twenties. What would you call the one past, and how do you feel about it? I hope to have one more column in this decade to talk about that.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you call 2010-2010 at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.