Looking Back

May 21st, 2025

I went to visit a friend of mine. It was a couple days ago. I go to spend time with him every week or so. We sit around, share a beer, and commiserate. I met him a long time ago at the synagogue. He’s older than I am by about sixteen years. We’re both writers. We are both retired, at least in the sense that we aren’t earning a wage anymore. We keep busy. Being retired and being idle are too very different things.

My friend lives only a block away from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) campus. I have to drive by the school grounds to get to his home. This means that I see numerous students walking around the area. Traffic tends to be heavy near the campus, so there are frequently cars in front of me that are waiting for a light to change or a pedestrian to cross the street. I have time to observe the latest generous of adults…and think.

I was a student almost fifty years ago. I look at these young people and I ask myself, “Was I like that?” The answer is, “I don’t know.” I really don’t.

It’s hard for me to remember things that happened half a century ago. Hell, it’s hard for me to remember things that happened five minutes ago. I can recall very few specific incidents from my youth. However, I can conjure up feelings that I had in the past. Now, that I have managed to get through the wormhole and I have survived several decades of chaos, I feel mostly a sense of relief. For better or worse, most of the big decisions in life have been made. Carl Jung wrote that the first half of life is the story, and the last half is the commentary. You are reading the commentary.

My youngest son, who is several years older than the college students, is not shy about telling me that I don’t understand the challenges of his generation. I’m sure that he’s right. He has struggles that I never had to deal with. The economy today is very different than it was when I was his age. The odds of him enjoying the financial security that I currently have are low. Many people his age will never be able to afford a home or even be able to pay off student loans. My son is doing well in his chosen profession, but the ground keeps shifting under his feet. He can’t make long term plans.

His generation’s views on relationships and sexuality seem exotic to me. Among his contemporaries, marriage is an anachronism, and relationships often seem to be transactional and transitory. Gender identity is now a multiple-choice question. When I was in my twenties, I knew only one openly gay person. Now, I know gay couples who are happily married. The ground has shifted under me too.

I don’t like social media, but I am still on the computer a lot (like right now). The students at UWM and other universities live and breathe technology. They have always had the Internet. They have always had Facebook. They have seldom written a note by hand, and they have probably never licked a stamp.

I am not saying that the new social environment is good or bad. It is probably a bit of both. All I know is that it is alien to me, but natural to these younger folks.

So, back to the question: “Was I like that?”

In some ways, definitely not. I managed to earn a bachelor’s degree, but that was at West Point. I was not a “college” student. I went four years to a school that only had only superficial characteristics of a university. USMA was like going to an Ivy League college and doing time simultaneously. Even when I was an undergraduate, I did not fit in with my civilian compadres. I was an outlier when I was young, and in many ways I still am.

So, did I have any similarities with the young people I see at UWM? Human nature does not change much, if at all. When I was their age, I was energetic, curious, idealistic, and naive. I was painfully awkward with members of the opposite sex. I was cocky and terrified at the same time. I am certain that the students who pass me by on the campus feel some of same things.

The students I see are trying to figure it out. They are trying to understand the meaning of their lives. They are trying to make sense of their world.

So am I.