After the wonderful performance of the Women’s World Cup by the US Women’s team I’ve come to realize that recent generations are missing something, a combined positive goal or pursuit to get rallied behind. It’s pretty easy nowadays to feel like a lone wolf and not reliant on anyone else and that we really don’t need to band together and make a difference. That premise is pretty baked into our society now with social media, texting, and other forms of communication getting less human and more digital. It’s easy to be fragmented with how globalized everything has become.
My grandparents generation had WW2, a combined pursuit of defeating the Nazi’s and the Japanese, my parent’s generation had the space race, the pursuit to land a man on the moon but then there really wasn’t anything after that. Since those moments in time, I can’t identify any moment that we as a nation or people have banned together for a positive world change or positive pursuit. Most of what we have done in a combined force has been out of fear and perpetuated by negative actions. I wish this weren’t the case, I wish my generation would have this grand moment in time where we could really make a difference on the world.
Now I don’t know what we can do in terms of finding something to rally behind or prop up and cheer on but that’s why I always find the World Cup fascinating, men’s or women’s, what happens in this country is pretty astonishing to me. Soccer being our countries 4th or 5th most popular sport and most Americans not giving a damn, something happens when it’s World Cup time, soccer fans and non-soccer fans rally together and cheer on our modern day heroes to a hopeful victory, a beautiful victory like we saw yesterday.
To me that means there’s still hope, that one day we will be able to put aside our differences and rally together for the good of everyone. There won’t be black, white, Christian, Muslim, gay, lesbian, transgender, democrat, republican, etc, etc there will just be Us, Americans, united to make a difference, a real difference that benefits not just us but the world. We were once a great country, an inspiring country, but now we squabble and fling flaming shit at each other hoping that anyone who disagrees with us will end burned and smelling of shit, it’s sad. I hope that one day, if I have kids, they will have a beautiful positive purpose to live their lives by and make an impact on this world that is both inspirational and good.