The tectonic plates of America are shifting beneath our feet. Can you feel the tremors?

I’m not talking about the foundations of our continent. I’m talking about the foundations our nation.

Our continent is rock, soil, and water; mountains and prairies and oceans white with foam.

Our nation is a people; a family that we love.

And if I might continue quoting Kate Smith for a moment, we would be wise to ask God to, “stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above.”

We feel the tremors of our unsteady family – our nation – not in our soles, but in our souls.

I felt the tremors of the waning “Me” generation shift into the groupthink perspective of the “We” in 2003. To read my nascent ramblings about it, just go to MondayMorningMemo.com and type “1963 All Over Again” into the website search block. This will take you to my MondayMorningMemo for December 15, 2003.

These are the important paragraphs:

“AOL and Google.com are the Kerouac and Salinger of the new generation that will soon pry the torch from the hands of Boomers reluctant to let it go. Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley have become Tupac Shakur and Eminem, and the Baby Boomers’ reaction to them is much like their own parents’ reaction to Chuck and Elvis. But instead of saying, ‘Take a bath, cut your hair and get a job,’ we’re saying, ‘Pull those pants up, spin that cap around and wash your mouth out with soap.’

“At the peak of the Baby Boom there were 74 million teenagers in America and radio carried a generation on its shoulders. Today there are 72 million teenagers that are about to take over the world. Do you understand what fuels their passions? Can you see the technological bonds that bind them?”

“Baby Boomer heroes were always bigger than life, perfect icons, brash and beautiful: Muhammad Ali… Elvis… James Bond. But the emerging generation holds a different view of what makes a hero.”

The only hard choice in life is the choice between two good things.

Freedom and Responsibility are both good things. But like all dualities, they oppose each other. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

All responsibility with no freedom makes you a slave. All freedom with no responsibility makes you a self-absorbed hedonist and an asshole.

But I promised to tell you how to keep your balance during this earthquake, didn’t I?

Here’s how to do it: remind yourself that different people perceive the world differently. They notice different things. They value different things. They live in their own private reality, and you live in yours.

You are acutely aware of what you see that they do not, and you want to open their eyes.

They are acutely aware of what they see that you do not, and they want to open your eyes.

Both of you feel you are being attacked.

I have a question for you: do the two of you have the courage to shut up and listen? Really listen? Can you muster enough courtesy and grace and self-restraint to share why you value what you value without disparaging or attacking what they value and why they value it?

If both of you can do this, you will find your balance and quit hating each other.

The birds will start singing, the flowers will bloom, a rainbow will appear, and everyone will laugh in joyous relief that the ugliness is finally over.

As I look back on the events that have marked the previous 37 zeniths of the “We” generation that have occurred during the past 2,960 years (937 BC,) I realize that no one is likely to do this.

But I thought I would give it a shot.

Roy H. Williams

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