Before the advent of video games all we had were pinball machines. Anyone remember those?
A steel ball would come out of the top, roll downhill, and along the way bounce off little bumpers and occasionally, if you were lucky, you could flip it back up onto the board for another downhill roll and more points. It was a game of hit and miss.
I sometimes think the life we're living today is just like a giant game of pinball and we're the little balls that get bounced around. Whether you succeed or fail is to a great extent outside your control....you can only jostle the table so much before it screams TILT and the game is over.
There was a time when we all thought we could plan for our own futures. (How do you make God laugh? Tell Him you have a "plan".) A good education, ambition, hard work, and eventually a 30-year gold watch and your golden years spent fishing....that's the way life worked. What happened to those days?
I think The Greatest Generation, provided they survived the Great Depression and World War II, hit it just right. After the war times were good, jobs generally stable, careers were for the long-term, and retirements were pleasantly comfortable (a relative term). For my generation though, retirement is a crap shoot. Our 401(k)'s have both soared and crashed-and-burned. I'm still waiting to see where I'll land. I'm not optimistic.
Meanwhile, those who deserve it the least seem to have fared the best. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere, but I don't see it.
S
