Students and parents walking side-by-side protesting the Vietnam War
In 1952 Harry Truman was President. The U.S was waging war against the North Korean communists. Joe McCarthy was waging war against the American communists. And I was born. I am a Baby Boomer.
During the 1950s and early 1960s I was a shy boy. I dreamed of being George Reeves as Superman so I could beat up the bullies who picked on me at the school bus stop. In the mid-1960s I dreamed of being Sean Connery as James Bond because he could beat up the Russians. Besides, Bond always got the beautiful woman and I wanted a beautiful woman too; what adolescent boy wouldn’t (unless you are gay).
But as a coming-of-age man in the late 1960s I began to grow out of my shyness and wanted something very different; I wanted to be part of revolution. I still wanted a beautiful woman, but I never saw how that would interfere with revolution.
At that time the new American Revolution was in progress. Old social norms were disintegrating; the Vietnam War was raging; and the release of the Pentagon Papers revealed that the war itself had been based on lies and deceit. By 1970 not only were young people protesting in the streets, parents too were walking arm-in-arm with America’s angry youth. They were tired of seeing their children die for something no one believed in anymore.
The world was on fire and I wanted to be part of it. It all seemed so exciting, even romantic. But as I later discovered, I was really much more interested in romance with a girl in my high school than I was in the romance of revolution.
So like so many others young people who falsely believed they were part of driving world-changing events, I did not walk the streets with placards declaring that the war should end. Nor was I part of taking over college buildings to force school administrators to offer Black and Native American study courses. Instead I, along with my friends, hung-out in our parents’ backyards and basements, and then railed against “establishment” policies while drinking copious amounts of beer, smoking pot, and figuring out how to get laid.
In the midst of all my faux revolutionary activity I graduated high school. At the time few people believed that I would amount to anything worthwhile and I worked hard to justify their opinion.
After barely graduating, I drifted for two years between lofty-minded careers like digging ditches and stocking paint shelves. But it was at that paint store that I believed my search for true revolution was finally realized. I remember vividly walking through the front door of that paint store one morning bracing myself for one more day of paint stirring-smelling-stocking tedium when I looked at the clock; it was 7:55 AM. I wondered how I was going to survive until 5:00 without shooting myself, or someone else.
Then it hit me-an epiphany! Attending college was my path to personal revolution, and then I could be part of the larger revolution. Now, this would not qualify as an epiphany for most people, but for a guy who thought Cornell was a meat-packing company (I mistook it for Hormel, the makers of SPAM) it indeed qualify as an epiphany.
It could have been a Higher Power that inspired me that day. Or it could have been the brain-numbing cold that you can experience during a Buffalo winter. But more likely it was the sugar high I was experiencing from eating six jelly donuts and drinking a quart of chocolate milk that morning. No matter the reason I did not shoot myself that day. The donuts saved me.
Confident in my own ignorance, I surged ahead with my plans to enter college as my friends and family wished me Godspeed and the assurance that they would not be lending me money to underwrite my epiphany.
It must be noted that I never took the SAT in high school and I graduated in the bottom 10% of my class. But none of that got in the way of my donut-fueled resolve to attend college and realize my personal revolution. The State University of New York at Alfred would be the nativity of my reinvention, even though it was unclear to me when I was invented the first time.
SUNY Alfred was situated among the verdant and gently rolling hills of upstate New York. The school was relatively close to my home (a 2 hour drive), and since I was a New York state resident tuition was relatively cheap. In addition to such sensible criteria for selecting a college, I would be about 90 minutes from where my girlfriend at the time was also attending college. That was probably the real deciding factor.
So with no credentials; no application essay; no money; and no idea what discipline I would study, I visited the SUNY Alfred admissions counselor for an interview. The counselor greeted me warmly as he shook off his afternoon nap. We spoke about the right course of study and resolved that Business Management would be the right fit. Of course, it was the only opening they had but I was not troubled by that. The counselor never mentioned SAT scores, essays, or money so I assumed he thought them irrelevant too.
Although I could not have realized this at the time, it is amazing what you can accomplish when you have no idea that you cannot accomplish it. Everything was going according to plan.
Finally, in the fall of 1972 I drove the 1968 red Volkswagen Bug that I once clumsily tried to have sex in, and my few worldly possessions to SUNY Alfred and my new life. My revolution had finally begun.
Of course the story goes on for decades from that point: the drug, sex, and booze-driven college days; a tedious accounting career; a not-well-thought-out marriage; the birth of my dear children; mortgages and cutting grass; a welcome divorce; a wonderful new love, and another dear child. It was the quintessential Baby Boomer path, but it was certainly not revolution.
From living on cigarettes & beer to feasting on Whole Foods fare
So 40 years after my donut-inspired epiphany I find that I am still looking for that life-changing revolution. I may have a better idea of what real revolution means, but I often feel nearly helpless to do anything about it. Back in the 1960s I thought that I, along with other student age men and women, would be the only ones who would author revolutionary change in the world; I was wrong. Revolutionary change comes when the many, at all social and economic strata, experience genuine transcendent change in the collective. So we don’t individually have to be a Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King to create real and positive change in our communities and the larger world. We can make very modest changes, but the sum of those individual efforts indeed could make large-scale changes happen. As a generation, I am disappointed in the Baby Boomer generation. We have swapped the desire for change with the desire for possessions. Boomers have failed to live up to their promise of real revolution, and that includes me.
Mother Teresa said “If you cannot feed 100, feed one.” I understood that sentiment to mean more than just feeding “one” a meal. I believe it also means feeding the person’s spirit; their soul. It is the kind of modest act that in the collective could make the kind of change we fought for so many years ago. At this point in my life I am uncertain, like my Baby Boomer brethren, if I have fed even one.
I am not responsible for the failings of a generation. But I am responsible for failing to live up to my own dream. I still believe that my real revolution is out there waiting for me to discover. I still believe there is a chance to feed at least one.