I remember, vividly, sitting in someone's living room with my dad, and we were talking about the prophecies of the Second Coming and the soviet threat and they were both in agreement that there was a small chance I would see the Soviet Union fall and such.
I remember that clearly.
People were so convinced at the time that the USSR was inconquerable, that we were barely surviving the Cold War. My dad used to tell me that if atom bombs come, pray you are close to the epicenter. And don't bother trying to hide from it. It's probably better if you die quickly.
Fast forward just a few years, and we watched the Berlin Wall. We watched Germans bring pick axes and sledgehammers and start wailing away on it. First a few, then a lot, and next thing you know they were selling bits of the Berlin Wall as mementos. We saw it with our own eyes and we couldn't believe it. I don't think my dad and I ever talked about what we saw on that TV. We just sat and watched in dumbfounded silence.
I think this is like that. You hope and pray that it will happen, then it does, and you just can't believe it. You have no words. It doesn't compute. You don't understand the world anymore, and things just don't add up. It's too much to process.
Even now in my brain there is a section reserved for the Red Scare. There is this idea that at any moment we could all disappear in a nuclear blast. There is the idea that some thoughts (like communism) are so horrible that we might literally die if we had them. But somewhere else there is the thought that it doesn't matter, that it was nothing, that somehow we believed something that couldn't possibly be true.
I talked with a kid about my age who grew up on the other side of the Berlin Wall. He shared what life was actually like in Soviet Russia, and what really happened. He talked about how everyone knew Communism was a joke but they all sang from the same hymnbook. When the wall fell for him, it was like a great relief -- they didn't have to tell each other lies all the time anymore.
I wonder if this will be more like my Russian friend's experience than my own. The bit where we don't have to tell each other lies anymore, where it's a great relief because something we all know is true but are afraid to say is no longer verboten.
Let me tell you this.
I remember, vividly, sitting in someone's living room with my dad, and we were talking about the prophecies of the Second Coming and the soviet threat and they were both in agreement that there was a small chance I would see the Soviet Union fall and such.
I remember that clearly.
People were so convinced at the time that the USSR was inconquerable, that we were barely surviving the Cold War. My dad used to tell me that if atom bombs come, pray you are close to the epicenter. And don't bother trying to hide from it. It's probably better if you die quickly.
Fast forward just a few years, and we watched the Berlin Wall. We watched Germans bring pick axes and sledgehammers and start wailing away on it. First a few, then a lot, and next thing you know they were selling bits of the Berlin Wall as mementos. We saw it with our own eyes and we couldn't believe it. I don't think my dad and I ever talked about what we saw on that TV. We just sat and watched in dumbfounded silence.
I think this is like that. You hope and pray that it will happen, then it does, and you just can't believe it. You have no words. It doesn't compute. You don't understand the world anymore, and things just don't add up. It's too much to process.
Even now in my brain there is a section reserved for the Red Scare. There is this idea that at any moment we could all disappear in a nuclear blast. There is the idea that some thoughts (like communism) are so horrible that we might literally die if we had them. But somewhere else there is the thought that it doesn't matter, that it was nothing, that somehow we believed something that couldn't possibly be true.
I talked with a kid about my age who grew up on the other side of the Berlin Wall. He shared what life was actually like in Soviet Russia, and what really happened. He talked about how everyone knew Communism was a joke but they all sang from the same hymnbook. When the wall fell for him, it was like a great relief -- they didn't have to tell each other lies all the time anymore.
I wonder if this will be more like my Russian friend's experience than my own. The bit where we don't have to tell each other lies anymore, where it's a great relief because something we all know is true but are afraid to say is no longer verboten.