What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

politics according to my 94 year old grandmother

Today, my grandmother, who was born in 1922, started talking to me about the Great Depression, politics and life. I thought what she said was powerful and relevant, and so I hurried to write it down, verbatim. In political discussions of all stripes at present, there’s often an idea that older people are out of touch and that various issues of importance to young people have somehow been manufactured wholesale in the past two decades, instead of being basic human concerns. My grandmother puts paid to both those assumptions, and so I think it’s important to share what she said:

“I grew up in the Great Depression. We never suffered too badly – my father was never out of work, and my grandparents, who lived in the country, would send us things to help out. Would you believe I once had to go into Central Station to collect a chook? A whole chicken, dressed, because we didn’t have chicken shops then. But it was very sad. You had children who’d come to school barefoot because they’d outgrown their shoes and their parents couldn’t afford to buy new ones, though some of the farmers would mend the shoes for free. And my grandparents would have people begging for food, or asking to work odd jobs.

People say now that young people are entitled, that they take prosperity and peace for granted. Well, why shouldn’t they? You come into the world without anything, without knowing anything, and nobody ever asked if you wanted to be there. You know that old saying, the Lord will provide? No. The world should provide. But we had people begging for food; nobody should have to do that. I think your generation is too informed to let that happen again. You’re educated, you know things – we were told that babies come from under the cabbage leaf.

There shouldn’t still be wars. We lived through the Great War; we were told it was the war to end all wars, but they’re still going on. It’s just greed. We should all be as happy as kings, so why do kings have more happiness? They don’t earn anything; it’s all just inherited.”

Empathy isn’t generational. It’s human.

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