Decade Changes Without Fanfare

The passing of the “00s” into the “10s” leaves me somewhat less than captivated by the permanent numerical change in the calendar.

It seems to me that the changing of a decade used to mean more. I remember sitting with my mother in the family room wondering what the 1980s would bring. We were blissfully unaware of the coming Reagan years which would roll back social progress and make greed fashionable. We had no idea I was about to burst through the closet door, beginning adulthood as an out and proud gay man, surviving one of the most terrifying periods of gay history when thousands were felled by AIDS.

1990 brought a full set of fresh hopes and expectations: a new career, new home, a wide open future. I didn’t know yet that I would feel the full effects of homophobia, get married and divorced, change occupational paths multiple times, or buy a home all by myself.

The last change of decades, of course, also brought a new millennium. Perhaps that’s why this new decade seems less interesting. It will be another thousand years before we match the excitement of Y2K when I drove up to Nebraska and celebrated the four-digit calendar turnover with my brother’s family over fireworks and a giant cookie on which I mistakenly wrote in frosting a welcome to the year 200 (yes, two hundred).

Prior to this millennium, talk of the future always began with the phrase, “By the year 2000 …” Predictions were as much hope as fact. By the year 2000:

• Our cars would fly.
• Robots would serve us in our homes.
• Colonies of humans would populate the moon and Mars.
• We would no longer eat food because all nutrition would be consumed in pills. 

Ever since 2000 I have felt like I was living in the future. In some ways, actual change in this decade has been as amazing as we imagined in the 1970s.

By 2010:

• Everyone carries their phone with them. Remember when the Star Trek communicator seemed so astounding? It didn’t do half that of our modern cell phones.
• There are hundreds of channels on the TV. There are even multiple channels dedicated solely to golf – quality is another subject altogether.
• The President of the United States has African ancestry.
• Ordinary, everyday information can be sent around the world in less than seconds – from my sofa, no less (while I watch one of hundreds of TV channels).
• Everyone can distribute their own writing or broadcast their own video with the technological potential to reach millions. If I wanted to, I could publish a text reporting to the entire world what I had for dinner or when I last went to the bathroom. Whether anyone cares is somewhat irrelevant.
• In some states and many countries, including now Argentina and Mexico, men are marrying men and women are marrying women. I couldn’t have imagined. 

Perhaps we’re just too tired to celebrate the passing of a decade like we used to. In addition to coping with the many changes, and adapting to the new technology, the past 10 years have been tough.

• A controversial President was put into power without a majority vote.
• Evil forces we didn’t understand attacked our country and caught us unaware, unleashing our own irrational response in the form of two wars we cannot seem to end.
• While the world is brought closer by technology, our country is increasingly divided and polarized, neither side willing or able to consider the others’ point of view. The world’s poor are left out of the conversation completely, but perhaps that is not so new.

The changing of a decade reminds us that time passes on a personal level as well. Some loved ones pass away while others are born. Marriages begin and end. Jobs and careers come and go. Friends drop out of our lives and sometimes drop back in.

 

The youthful hope of 1990 is calmer and more confident now, somewhat wizened, with a bit less stamina, and a little less arrogance. Certainly there is less hair on top and a few more wrinkles down below. Whatever this new decade brings, there will certainly be change, and there’s no telling what we’ll be remembering in 2020.