A Generation X metaphor for 2024
Are you missing something in 2024? Not just your keys or phone, or even your will to get out of bed most days.
Did you make resolutions that you’ve already given up, or have you begun to feel like this year seems like season four of a faltering television show? Like Jimmy Smits is going to show up out of nowhere, or the lead character will mysteriously inherit a young wise-cracking child from a family member.
Seemingly, we’ve all come through the last three years of pandemic and panic of every sort, including democratic, economic and systemic, thinking maybe it’s a bad trilogy of apocalyptic films and 2024 will be the bright catalyst for a stabilization of these unpredictable years. Somehow, the last three weeks already seem fairly lackluster.
It could be this unbearable cold of late, because we’re all suffering from winter amnesia. It was snowing and frigid these very same dates for the last three years, according to the best arbiter of time I know, which means those Facebook memories that pop up to serve as our digital diaries.
It could also be a case of Generation X’s apocalypse ennui. We’ve already lived through more “end of the world scenarios” than any other generation. We know what “the day after” and “the day after tomorrow” and also what a “day off” could bring, but we remain detached from all the Henny Penny-ness of these worst-case scenarios. Please, do not ask us if we would “like to play a game.”
When I recall the last year, I feel a tense pleasure as I remember all of the amazing things I experienced and gained while there’s this simultaneously simmering sense of emptiness about moments missed out on, of belongings and mementos I no longer possess.
And I missed out on and lost a lot – opportunities, jewelry, credit card statements, concerts, weeks of my life due to lingering “mountain allergies” and many important phone calls, just to name a few. For the record, the credit card statements were no fault of my own, but a wonky postal glitch that took two months to resolve.
However, my commitment to keeping the U.S. Postal Service in business remains steadfast. I’d rather deal with stamps and envelopes and filing statements than a slew of online accounts and phone alerts. So, please don’t blame me if stamps increase in price this year.
Despite this cloying sense of anxiety for the recent past, this inherently Southern penchant deep-seated in the DNA to ruminate on what should have been, I’m still optimistic for this new season, to consider what I gained, because not everything that has gone missing is lost.
Every day we’re striving for more, more to have, find and seek, which can quickly grow into clutter, an overgrowth in the soul. However, God says we’re to be still and know Him, but we’re not readily adaptable to that in American culture as driven creatures looking for security and comfort and ease.
We don’t often think thankfully about our current circumstances because of a search for tomorrow, to echo a popular soap opera of the 1970s. Maybe these wintry snow days have allowed us to embrace that stillness we need in our lives to contemplate the reason so many creatures hibernate in wintertime.
Given world events over the past three or more months, the malaise and ennui over wars, elections and social discord seems ready to engulf us, or maybe it’s just me. The GEN-X tendency toward adapting to each new apocalypse variant.
But, I think it’s just that Season Four syndrome: we’re trying to flip the script, create new characters, to discover some new hook and myriad ways to fill our days with precious and pleasant experiences, while trying to forget the world is in turmoil in so many places, sometimes our little mountain enclave as well. We’re modern-day Neros, fiddling with filters and our phones while everything burns.
This past fall was no exception for that burning. Andrews saw one of the largest wildfires in its history, which I blame for the respiratory problems we’ve been dealing with these last few months. Those fires troubled the community even though we came together to take care of the wild-land and volunteer firefighters, even though we finally got that much-needed rain.
Again, what we missed wasn’t lost, it just came at a time we didn’t expect it. Our greed for instant gratification sometimes stunts our thankfulness in all circumstances.
There was no loss of structures or life in the area wildfires and, according to forest ecology, fire is regenerative and needed, especially in Eastern forests, which don’t typically have those seasons of renewal, terrible and terrifying though they may be.
What we gained is a more resilient forest understory for future generations. What we lost was mostly unnecessary overgrowth, thick, woody debris that is best taken care of before it grows beyond control.
Losing control of a new year or season should be our goal, letting God take us through each season of life as He sees fit, letting Him trim everything that is overgrown or unnecessary in our lives. Blessing us with found opportunities, trusting the timing, not greedily demanding or expecting.
The best thing I gained last year is this job, which has been such a pleasure and allowed me to meet numerous new people and attend so many vital community events. Too, I’ve gotten to employ longtime friends and acquaintances as valued sources for articles I never dreamed I would have a chance to write. This is the best, most challenging occupation in a long time, and I deeply appreciate the opportunity to tell your stories in these mountain towns.
So, for everything I’ve lost or missed out on, I’ve been granted so very much more, and I look forward to what 2024 will bring to our communities and how I’ll be able to weave those stories into real local news articles.
There’s still a prickly uneasiness in thinking too far ahead into the year, but I do have one prediction – we’ll have that same “amnesia,” but of the summer variety, when August blasts us with her furnace or when the “heat dome” returns to burn us as it settles over our mountain area for that hellish week, as it inevitably does.
Still, let’s try to focus not on what we’re missing or have lost, but what we’ve found, for each way we’ve learned to combat and control the overgrowth that causes those fires. Because we also know what a certain kind of “day off” looks like. Anyone? Anyone?
Nicole Wright of Andrews is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Email her at nicole.wright.scout@gmail.com.