Raise your hand if you're over 30...
(Seriously hit reply with the year you we're born we wanna know.)
If yes, here's a quick recap of the story so far, take a deep breath cus it's a dive:
April 20, 1999- Columbine school shooting
Two kids walk into a school in Littleton armed with guns and explosives - killed 12 students and 1 teacher, injured more than 20 others and then killed themselves. Most of us heard about it, most of us likley struggled to make it make sense as children.
12/31/1999 // Y2K-
Everything is going to 0, planes are gonna fall out the sky, anything with a computer's gonna shut down and we don't know how to avoid it... fortunately (maybe) none of that happened but it basically set the tone for a pretty fragile world for us kids who had no idea.
September 11th, 2001
Twin Towers
You remember exactly where you were. Airplanes didn't fall outta the sky they flew into buildings. The adults in our lives turend on the TV and I think they've been on ever since. We weren;t old enough to know what was going on exactly but we knew this was different. We watched the footage over and over and over at home, in school, anywhere a TV was on. Confirmation: the world WAS fragile.
War on Terror -
Afghanastan in 2021, Iraq in 2003, we had no idea where these places really even were or what we were after but we were told over and over again there were bad guys who wanted to kill Americans. We all watched the nightly news, watched death tolls and explosions and B.O.B. Bombs over Baghdad by Outkast became some wild theme song like bombs were a party favor for the chapter we were in.
and the bombs kept droppin'
Hurricane Katrina
Category 5 Hurricane hits. 80% of New Orleans flooded. More than 1,800 people died across the Gulf Coast, hundreds of thousands were displaced. Some of us got wet, the rest of us watched more devastion on the news that was still on.
Global financial crisis of 2007–2008
Housing crash, bank failures, recession, layoffs, foreclosures... welcome to the world, kids - it's yours now. As we went into debt to get an education we learned yet again we're on shakey foundations.
The Mass Adoption of Social Media
Myspace, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter,TikTok - the social world changed forever into a digital expression of a physical existence where the tail learned to wag the dog real quick.
We became the last generation to know an anaolog existnce and grow into a digital one. Landlines, paper maps,disposable cameras, knocking on your friends front door to see if they were home and being unreachable for hours left the chat.
2020 -COVID-19 Global Pandemic
Lockdowns, death, venitlators,forced social isolation, mask stuff, job instability, financial uncertainty, canceled rituals, missed funerals, missed weddings, disrupted births, disrupted graduations, disrupted community, supply chain shortages, constant death counts, prolonged uncertainty, and reintegration fatigue afterward that still impacts how we interact.
The list goes on but if you're feelin' some type of way about the world - there's a quick look into why that might be. And, since we're your friends we're gonna grab you by the face and turn your head to see the other reality that doesn't sell nearly as many tickets as fear....
You're ok.
We're ok.
There's still time.
No matter where you're standing, odds are someday, you’ll look back and wish you were this exact age again.
You'd give anything to return to this moment, just as it is.
Knowing that at any moment - the universe could drop it's next album to yet agin make the world a fragile place to be and throw you back into survival mode - ask yourself this:
What would future you wish you had done with the time you have right now?
What would future you wish you had done with the energy you have right now?
What would they wish you had done with the dream that still has life inside of you right now?
Better yet - what is future you gonna THANK YOU for when you meet them?
What is the first step, the one you can take right now to that end?
You've been through a lot.
A lot of time has been pulled out from under ya by forces outside of your control.
But the most valuable asset? The one even the billionaires can’t buy back... you've still got more than most.
So, technically, you’re not just the youngest you’ll ever be again…
You’re also the richest you’ll ever be again.
Invest your TIME,
>
GFDD
PS- We left these out:
Oklahoma City bombing
Columbine High School massacre
Y2K and the fear of global computer collapse
September 11 attacks
War on Terror
War in Afghanistan
Iraq War
Hurricane Katrina
the mass adoption of the internet and social media
the smartphone era and being online all the time
Global financial crisis of 2007–2008
the housing market collapse and foreclosure crisis
the rise of school shootings as regular national news
the normalization of lockdown drills in schools
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Arab Spring
Death of Osama bin Laden
Boston Marathon bombing
Rise of ISIS
Mass surveillance becoming daily life
Constant political polarization
Wildfires becoming annual large-scale disasters
Climate change and climate disaster anxiety becoming mainstream
The loneliness epidemic
Mental health crisis
Global lockdowns
Quarantine and isolation
School closures
Business shutdowns
Mask mandates/public health conflict
Supply chain shortages
Toilet paper shortages (never forget)
Economic shutdown and unemployment spikes
Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Inflation surge of the early 2020s
Housing affordability crisis
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Generative artificial intelligence
And underneath all of it:
A.non-stop 24-hour news cycle
Anxiety around always being reachable
The loss of privacy
The loss of boredom
The loss of offline life
Pressure of comparison through social
Normaliation of conomic uncertainty
and the sense that every few years the world changed again before we fully caught our breath from the last time.
It ain't been easy on the ol' nervous system is all we're sayin'. Go touch some grass and take the bars back on the story of you.
-GFDD CREW
❤️🏴
