I feel for young people today. I admit, I’m boomer. We had it hard, we had it easy. My father got me and my brothers up before 6 am to do heavy manual labor on Saturdays, before breakfast. My first memory of this was either four or five years old. I don’t remember complaining but maybe I did. I was fortunate to get work while still in high school and then full time right out of high school as well, the latter also, compliments of my father. Almost immediately, I had health insurance before I turned 19 years old. I married. Our firstborn came just a little over two years later. There were no residual balances or deductibles. Obstetrics and medical costs were still very basic back then. I grew up without air conditioning. That was a luxury enjoyed by others more well off. Once living on my own, I was in an apartment for $275 a month, but still no air conditioning. My first air-conditioned house would not come for another 27 years, but by then, I did enjoy it in my vehicle and work office. It was only afterward that it became a non-negotiable necessity. I watched the Apollo landing and first walk on the moon late one night on July 24th, 1969. The whole family watched it on a black and white TV, roughly the same size as the desktop computer monitor I now use. That same TV is the one where I tried playing Pong, one of, if not the first ‘computer’ games. Dad splurged to buy the little controller. I only remember playing it once, maybe twice. It was fun, but not fun enough to keep coming back to it again repeatedly. For real fun, I had my bicycle, a stripped-down version of a standard bike, sans even fenders, no multiple gears, coaster brakes. A dozen or so spokes were missing between both wheels. Yet, I took that bike everywhere, at least five or six miles a day, sometimes much further. There were no helmets and in fact in summer, there were no shoes or shirt either. Shoes were only worn to church on Sunday during the summer. It was just me, the bike, the wind, the roads and forest, the forests where I’d spend hours exploring. All of this was prior to the age of real video games. There were no smart phones. There were two rotary dial phones in the house, both with cords that could stretch up to about fifteen feet. That was the privacy mode. News was three channels or a newspaper. We had family dinners, and they were not optional. In fact, no meal was optional and the food my mom served was to be eaten, no exception. If we objected, we might be forced to sit at the table for an hour or two, crying usually. Once I had my own household, I raised my kids much the same way. By then, times were a little more dangerous but not in any obvious way. We didn’t know every neighbor, but we knew the ones that counted most, and they were an extension of our eyes and ears. I earned my first car via a work arrangement and paid it off with labor from a family friend at church. It was a 1965 VW bug, badly rusted as it turned out, so the price was reduced. Most of my vehicles were under $500 for many years. Obviously, I was not rich, but I did not see myself as poor. The first half of my career(s) were solidly ‘blue collar’ and that was OK. I had little to no debt, raised four kids, and eventually built a house. My first home mortgage was at 9 5/8% and that was a special rate as we were still coming down from Jimmy Carter’s stagflation years. As I recall, it had been at 18% when I first set out on my own. Home ownership has always been hard but for different reasons. We went to church, and I gave financially to the church as well. As a young man comes of age, he faces a mountain ahead of him. The first Y in the road is this: will you remain a child or will you become a man? Will you remain a dependent or beget dependents that with hope, will themselves grow to make the same choices. Will you be protected or a protector. Will you take a long road or a shorter path. I won’t claim to have made all the right choices but choices I did make and that is what counts the most. I did not let life happen to me. I instinctively took a direction forward out of the cradle that had nurtured me. I launched, immediately. One year, I was in the comfort of a high school, exactly in the middle of my class, academically, and the next year, I was up at 5, at work before 7, working eight hours outside in temperatures ranging literally from 0° to 100°. I paid a price; I received a benefit. I learned skills along the way. Many years later, I eventually sought and received college degrees. My youth would be difficult for others to replicate today, at least in most sophisticated social settings, but it would not be impossible. If one chooses rural over urban, family over peers, nature over digital, perspective changes dramatically. This doesn’t negate all contact with the opposites, but one must be secure in their roots. This is not a fixed prescription for a young person today, just an orientation to a landscape and a history. I do feel for young people today. I know that they/you feel angst. Most of that angst is from choices that you and your parents already made. If I could relive my youth, I’d do some thing differently. Most of you, the young, will not land too far from where I landed even though the conditions of our era are dramatically different. Most of you will work, marry, have a family, have a margin of material comfort, and deal with aging the same as all your forebears. How you get there is your choice.