I Refuse to Say Fail

Many critics have labeled this last decade a failure.

Between 9/11, tsunamis, Hurricane Katrina, and The Hills, many people have decided that the 00's was one of the worst decades in history.

Apparently some people have forgotten the World War Decades, the Vietnam years, the onslaught of AIDS in the 80's, and that period in the 90's when people actually listened to Vanilla Ice.

I refuse to say this decade was a failure.

And you know what? Even if it was, the next decade certainly isn't going to be any better by labeling this one a loss.

I think the biggest problem of this decade was--Yes, here's where I become a self-help guru--negativity.

The patterns I saw over and over again from the time I was sixteen on was "Lift 'em up, then watch 'em fall."

Pick a person, a situation, a show, a movie--and laud it. Praise it. Plaster it across the skies.

Then take it down. Degrade it. Attack it.

Now we're trying to do that to an entire decade.

Well, I say 'No.'

Yes, there was 9/11, but there was also a country and a world full of people uniting together after a crisis.

Yes, there was the onslaught of stupidity that is reality television, but there's also been smarter and more interesting television produced this past decade than in the rest of television history combined. (I'm sorry, kids, but most of those old television shows--though entertaining--were not all that clever. Try watching a rerun of 'I Dream of Jeannie' and tell me if you disagree.)

Yes, there were eight years of a horrible President, but there was also an election where everyone decided that we had to turn things around--and No, they haven't been turned around yet. The negative people just can't wait to start getting in early on screwing up the next ten years.

Well, I say 'No.'

I could easily look at things from a darker perspective, and many times I have, but I will not take ten years of my life and say they compromised nothing, or that they were made up of disasters and catastrophes.

Yes, we have to be more practical as a country. We have to be realistic. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book called "Bright Sided" about the dangers of strictly positive thinking, and I understand what she's getting at, but I also think that there's a difference between being pragmatic and being a whining asshole.

(Sorry for the technological terminology.)

I think we need to have hope. That's a statement that's been echoed a lot lately, but people don't seem to be listening.

We have to hope, and we have to plan. Let's not get confused--as our President says, Hope is not a plan. So we need both.

We have to remember to smile at each other--it helps.
We have to remember to laugh--it really helps.
We have to remember that spirit of unity we had after 9/11--not the unbridled nationalism, but the feeling like it was okay to ask someone how they're doing even if you don't know them.

We have to say that we'll make the next ten years better, but that doesn't mean we have to say the last ten sucked.

These were years of people's lives--and they make up a generation.

Can someone tell me what good would come of telling an entire generation that they're a wash?

I say we don't say fail.

I say, for once, we say something else.