The Year-Dometer Is Turning Over

As the year-dometer turns over to a new decade, it seems only appropriate that we reflect on the decade past and ...

Before I go on, I want to address those of you who are upset with me because the new decade doesn't start until 2021 and I obviously don't understand basic numbers. Yes, I'm aware that there was no "year zero" and that we start counting everything with the number one. But I'm not a math fundamentalist. I think that, for example, it's symbolically more meaningful when your car odometer turns over to 100,000 miles than 100,001. So try not to get too riled up and let's get on with it.

Unfortunately, I'm at an age where the last 10 years are indistinguishable from the 10 before that. Wasn't the turn of the century just 10 years ago? Seems like only yesterday, we ate a cake that said, "Welcome 2000" and accidentally shot live fireworks into the woodpile.

Ever since 2000, I've said we are living in the future. The elders among us might remember how in the 1960s and 70s, predictions of the future always started with, "By the year 2000 ..." which seemed impossibly far away. And now? Smart phones. Self-driving cars. They still seem like science fiction to me. On the other hand, I struggle to remember how we got to our friends' homes in the suburbs without GPS. Did we really fumble around with paper maps that we could never fold back to their original state?

Some of the decade's highlights for me personally:

• I got legally married and I'm still amazed about that.
• I became Episcopalian.
• I went from middle age to upper middle age.
• I bought a house riddled with stupid problems.
• I got a Kindle reader.

Our national life has been no less eventful:

• It became legal for same sex couples to marry.
• There is a general trend towards legalizing marijuana.
• "They" as a singular, personal pronoun came into acceptance.
• There are more good programs on TV than ever before and thanks to DVRs and streaming, we can watch them at our own convenience.

On the other hand:

• The U.S. accelerated on its journey to hell with shady Republicans engineering voter suppression and other stunts. These culminated in an illiterate, immoral, psychopath in the white house and a supreme court that will halt progressive changes at every turn for years to come.
• Climate change and global warming continued to worsen while we basically continued to not do much about it.
• Corporations figured out how to gather even more reams of data on us through technology that we bring into our homes on purpose. It's so bad now that experts recommend putting a piece of low tech tape over the camera on your new television because, theoretically and technically, someone out there could be watching you..

You know, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to extend the decade one more year. That would give us a little extra time to end the 10s on a more positive note and brace ourselves for the 20s.

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.