Quote of the Day - Times Like These

In times like these, it is important to remember there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey

I should be amazed at the number of people who believe we are living through a uniquely hard or bad time today. It is not surprising, though. Throughout my life I have heard people complain about how things are getting worse, how times are uniquely bad, how we are All Gonna DIE! It is not new. We have always had times like these.

Unaffordable housing and no opportunities for college graduates? The year I graduated from college, we were coming off the second oil shock. When I bought my first house (1200sq ft), the mortgage rate was 12.7%. We were grateful to get it at that because two weeks later it was 18% for a 30-year mortgage, and housing prices were doubling. It was an economic environment of stagflation, marked by high unemployment and high inflation. We were doomed, friends insisted. (Spoiler alert: we weren't.)

Civil unrest unique in American history? Riots were sweeping the country when I was in my teens in the 1960s. We had domestic terrorists conducting bombings with regularity. A building I was in had a bomb explode in it three hours after I had left it—so yeah. That kind of stuff was happening up close and personal. We were doomed, friends insisted. (Spoiler alert: we weren't.)

When I was seven, there was almost a nuclear war over this thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Full thermonuclear exchange. I was young enough that it sounded exciting. We were doomed, my parents' friends insisted. (Spoiler alert: we weren't.)

Of course, there was also pollution killing us all, we were going to run out of oil and drinking water, the Y2K bug, 9-11, and lots more. That's just in my lifetime. If all the predictions were true, we would all be living in caves. Instead the world is a better place in 2026 than it was in 1956, or 1966, or really any decade between today and 1976. Yet throughout those years, I kept hearing a familiar lament: "Ain't it awful, things have never been worse, we aren't going to make it." Yet somehow we did.

That is just in my lifetime. This country has gone through Bleeding Kansas, the American Civil War, the various Panics of (fill in the year) in the late 1800s. Then there was Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. Because there have always been times like these - some better and some worse.

And yes, we will make it. If enough people decide to push on, do their best, and keep striving, despite the predictions of doom. There have always been times like these.