2010-2019 – What kind of a decade was it

There are two kinds of history – – personal and everything else.

To acknowledge the passing of history, humans set signposts along the road.  For personal history, those signposts are birthdays, anniversaries, births and deaths.  For everything else, those signposts are the calendar, highlighted by centuries and decades.  Next year marks the beginning of a new decade, and the end of this year marks the end of a decade.

Historians often use the ending of a decade to look back 10 years and see what transpired in relationship to the world.  Individuals don’t often see the ending or beginning of a decade as any significance, but they had been impacted by the trends.

Three major themes permeated the decade from 2010 to 2019 – – social change, economics and war.

Every individual has been impacted by those three events.  I personally have been impacted by social change.  For the first time in my life I realize that I am an old white male.  The old was a given.  The realization that I was a white man was never truly in my mind.   I just accepted it and thought little about it.  However, the social change sweeping our country has forced me into a tribe.  I would prefer to fit into the tribe of “human” but I’ve been pushed into a sub-group.   All of us have.

Economic change also fostered itself on me.  I’ve been semi-retired for nearly two decades.  The Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 had little impact on me.  But, it affected my family.  The great recovery, starting in 2010 and running to this very day has positively impacted me.  For the first time, all of my children and all of my older grandchildren,who aren’t in school, are employed.  My 401k and other retirement investments have continued to pay dividends.  That significantly affects me.

And War.  I have no family member currently serving in any military capacity.  I’m not alone.  It’s estimated that less than 3 percent of the families in the United States are personally affected by our two-decade war on terror.  Yet, I feel personally impacted.  Living in a community in which more than a quarter of the population is involved in the military, I feel their presence every day.  In many ways, those families who wear the uniform feel like my family.

So, where is politics.  Our decade has been covered in politics for the whole ten years.  You should have been personally impact by politics my friends say.   Not really, I reply.   Politics is just the water that we swim in.  Sometimes its warm, sometimes its cool, but its always wet.  It’s just there.