Rage, Rage Against the Dying of Your Joy

Before you unsubscribe, I want you to know that I can find plenty to criticize on both sides of the political aisle. The truth is, we live in a country where some people, left and right alike, would like to cut out your tongue and chop off your hands for saying something they disagree with. It can be scary here, everywhere. I mean no harm.

Charlie Kirk’s death was a torrent, sudden and bright, like a hydrant uncapped. His veins torn loose, his blood gushing.

I have hardly written in a month.

I basically only knew about Kirk through my teenagers, cradle Catholics who drew inspiration from many of his messages but were also turned off by some. Nevertheless, his assassination shook them. “Don’t watch the video,” they said.

I watched it anyway. As horrible as it was, I’m glad I did. I also hope I never see it again.

Watching the blood pour out of Charlie messed me up. I knew gunshots could be deadly and people could bleed out. In the early aughts, I was the Public Information Officer for a large ambulance service and saw things I’d like to forget. But I never saw blood pour from a body like wine from a pitcher.

In the aftermath of Charlie’s death, I read all the things: the sorrow and the blame from his fans and followers, the venom and the vitriol from his critics and detractors. The gap between them was jarring. Two Americas fixed on the same face, one anointing him a martyr, the other condemning him a monster. The chorus said as much about us as it did about him.

I haven’t written a Generation X Newsletter in over a month. I’ve managed a few innocuous posts on my original blog, most of which are kind of lame. But I posted one yesterday about the FFA Sweetheart tradition, and if I’d known people were going to like the subject so much, I would have done a better job. I need an editor because I am bad at story-spotting.

My review of the amazing football documentary Catholics vs. Convicts produced three likes on Facebook. Another post about the 35th anniversary of Desert Shield produced nine likes. Whuuuut? Better not quit my day job.

But, seriously. These posts took hours to write.

The FFA Sweetheart post did, too, but only because I spent a stupid number of hours searching in vain for pictures of Gen X Sweethearts wearing the highly coveted white corduroy Sweetheart jackets. Did you know they died with Generation X?

Dang, that made me so sad. I had no idea.

Anyway, this post pulled in 65 likes on Facebook. Not bad for a link that actually takes you away from the platform’s endless reels. (I feel like such an idiot for watching a clip of a tiny guy with a big girl riding piggyback as they leap off a roof onto a trampoline, only to bounce off, land on both feet, and spring back up on the tramp again. I watched this video so many times, marveling each round that they didn’t die.)

Today, this is what we call content. We’ve traveled back to 1881 and Barnum & Bailey’s dog-faced boy. That’s some real progress.

I was delighted to discover that the FFA Sweetheart post meant something to several dozen people. So often, Generation X stories feature all the usual suspects: latchkeys, MTV, big hair. I love finding new histories to share, and I love making people feel seen.

So here I am again, ready to start a new edition of the Generation X Newsletter, perhaps with greater focus on our beautiful past. There were good days, am I wrong? Despite my turbulent childhood and youth, there were profoundly happy days. Days I rode my bike through a creek on a shortcut to Walmart. I shopped for school clothes by myself and put them on layaway, including a parrot shirt and a pair of jeans with an embroidered parrot on the back pocket. I had the parrot trend covered, y’all. So proud.

But I was 12, and I had no idea how I was going to pay for those clothes. And then one day, a letter written on Marine Corps stationery arrived in the mail. It was from my older brother Billy, who was stationed in Okinawa. Inside were three clean $20 bills. It was one of the happiest days of my childhood.

I think now, more than ever, it’s important for Gen Xers to share whatever happy stories they may have. Our children are reaching for them, hoping to find some counterweight to the original feral, FAFO generation that is their mom and dad.

Like all humans, we have a psychological bias toward remembering negative events more readily than positive ones. We need to push back against this tilt. There will always be warm blood in the street rendering us cold and sometimes silent. But despair cannot become the only lens through which we see the world. Joy never denies suffering; instead, it steadies us within the tragedies we witness and endure. It expands our sense of what’s possible and increases our gratitude for what remains. In this regard, joy, and joy alone, is our strength.

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