Generations, you know, are kind of clumped together by a sort of vaguely shared world view. We’re shaped by the conditions into which we’re born, reared, and attempt to acquire a mortgage loan. There can be stark contrasts from generation to generation, and we frequently look back at once banal behavior and think “good god what were we even doing?”

Like, how did humanity survive the 60s?  Martini and cigarette lunches counted as a prenatal lunch. We clear cut and strip mined pretty much the whole damn place, because, you know, fuck it, right? Asbestos just went in everything. We had a bunch of idiots push us to the brink of nuclear war to save face (can you imagine?).

When we look back at foolishness in the past, it’s easy shrug it off as folks then not having known better. But then if we look at the way we live now – what do we take for granted today that won’t make any sense tomorrow?

Here’s an idea:

Sledding – If you grew up anywhere north of, say, Omaha, then you saw some pretty real shit on the sledding hill and this needs no explanation. If you grew up in the south, then you might have to do a quick Google search for “sledding accidents” to get a feel for what we’re talking about. You’ll find the “News” results heartbreaking and the “Video” results hilarious.

Fireworks – We have to take our shoes off in the airport, but you can just go to the store and buy a goddamn bomb. For like $5. This is the kind of incongruity that can only stand for so long, and I’m not holding my breath for the shoes issue. Also Tannerite is still for sale over the counter but the grocery store hides the Vanilla Extract behind the customer service desk. Really?

The Whole “Car” Thing – Our dependency on/infatuation with cars doesn’t make any sense. Photographs of rush hour traffic, one hundred years from now, will look as ridiculous and short sighted as clearcutting the redwoods:

Disposables – Packaging, clothes, toys, bikes, diapers, car seats, cars, phones, plastic silverware, paper plates, food containers, cups, water bottles, computers, etc. etc. We’re in a culture that’s paired a globalized economy with marketing platforms driven by planned obsolescence. Everything is disposable and that doesn’t really make any sense.

The Apathy – The big thing, though, is that previous generations have gotten away with things like the Berkeley Pit, Jim Crow Laws, and industrial deforestation on folksy charm. On this idea that they didn’t know any better, that they were fundamentally well meaning people, doing the best they could with the information they had. That doesn’t fly anymore. Ours is the first generation that’s on the record as knowing better. Some people in the past saw changes coming, and some folks now legitimately don’t get it. But collectively, as a whole, we’re the first generation with a working understanding of how our actions shape the global landscape. Our legacy will be whether or not we do anything about it.

It’s not even a particularly bad day at work. The morning’s coffee was hot, strong, and copious, your coworkers flooded the office with superfluous Easter candy, and the Great Paperwork Carousel is cycling through more or less smoothly. It’s a Monday, which everyone always complains about because it’s lame to like your job, but you don’t really see what the big deal is and just had a nice, relaxing weekend. And then you decide you want one more coffee.

So you head next door to the coffee store and it’s there that you see him. You know the type. You may even know the exact guy. Late 20’s, unshaven, wearing a cardigan he got in Peru. Reading a book, a real paper book, with pages, not a Kindle or something, probably Turgenev, or Pound, or some unbearably pretentious thing, but just sitting there, at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Monday, just sipping an espresso and reading a book, and you think to yourself, “ugh fine you’re right maybe I should just go get an MFA.”

It’s an easy trick to fall for.

He looks great, all relaxed and Bohemian. You are jealous at first, and then remember that you, too, can live in the lap of luxury: take a sick day, and just, like kick it. This is not a New Year’s Resolution, because New Year’s Resolutions are stupid, and also because it’s April. But yeah, you should take a sick day when you’re not.

And to be clear, this is not a sick day to go skiing (also a good idea), or a sick day because you went to that AC/DC cover band last night and you’re hungover, or because you’re legitimately mired in some horrifying gastrointestinal morass. This is a sick day to recognize that the premise of the 40 hour work week, that all jobs require the same amount of work, is essentially sick in and of itself, and that as a celebration of that sickness you should go get some Camus (The Plague, or Nausea seem fitting) and read it in public over a handrolled cigarette. In the middle of the afternoon.

This is about your health, remember. And our health, really, like, as a society. And with that said I really should get back to work.