Does it seem like everyone is struggling

winner, life is full of challenging situations.  Everyone faces them at one time or another.  Some people are unfortunate enough to be confronted with several of them all at the same time.

I think what has happened is that our BC dx has focused our attention on those things, so we tend to notice them more.  Maybe we linger on the bad stuff, and worry about it more, than we did before BC.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm old enough to have been alive, and alert, during the 1960's.  I remember quite well the day I got home from school and saw my mom watching a news report about the Cuban missile crisis.  I thought for sure we would be at war with the Soviet Union within a few days, and everyone back then knew that meant nuclear war.  I recall clearly the packets of information she brought home from the "civil defense" meetings, where people were taught what to do in case of nuclear war--where to go, what to eat, how long to stay underground.  My dad even constructed a concrete-block room in the basement, to be used as a shelter.  (We ended up using it as a shower instead.)

I was in high school during the turmoil of the civil rights movement, when police fought with marchers in the streets of our cities, and the whole thing was broadcast on TV every night.  A beloved President was shot and killed, leaving a wife, young daughter, and infant son.  A few years later, his brother was shot and killed, as was one of the most prominent civil rights activists in the country.

The war in Vietnam was fought during my high school and college years.  My cousin was killed in Vietnam, about 6 weeks after he arrived there.  I still have a postcard he sent from the Phillipines, enroute to where he would be posted (and killed).  The war was tolerable at first, but of course became wildly unpopular among a large proportion of Americans before the U.S. finally just quit and went home.  I was sitting in a college class one time when student protestors were being beaten and tear-gassed just outside our building.  Our instructor had to close the windows to keep the tear gas out.  Cars were overturned and burned; campus buildings were damaged; protestors were bloodied--and the whole event was broadcast live on TV, for everyone to see.

As for personal crises, well, every family has those.  I won't list the number of divorces, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, fatal car accidents, lost jobs, etc., that affected my family--and that was all before 1975.

Then there was the oil crisis, which pushed gas prices sky high and created lines a mile long; there was a period of insane inflation in which mortgage interest rates were up around 14%; there were times when the unemployment rate was far higher than it is today; ...

So, no...IMHO, things in the world today are not worse than they used to be.  Times are troubled, but they always are.  We just need to muster the strength to get through it to the other side.

otter 

It isn't a random selection.  When life is just going hunky dory there isn't much to talk about.   At one time I could have gone on at some length about my jerky husband - and trust me he was a class A jerk.  But now he's a nice guy, so what's to say?   Two of my three sons were royal pains in the patootie as teens, but now they are quite nice young men.  Who cares about that?

If I ever did a bumper sticker it would surely be "shit happens" cause it happens to everyone.  I'm about the same age as otter, and have about the same view.   I don't know what's happening in the world, but I know that I wouldn't go back 50 years for anything.  The good old days, weren't.

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