Taking Stock: The Uh-Oh Years

In June 2002, I wrote an essay titled “The Uh-Oh Years” that was later published in my collection, American Avenue: Rhythm & Reason (2007).  “Uh-Oh” was my duo-toned neume to represent a double-zero decade that appeared to be headed in a perilous direction after the dot-com bust and 9/11.  At the time I wrote:

I fear the pain is just beginning.  Our capital markets drift lower still; world leaders listen to our counsel with blank stares while their people learn it’s okay, perhaps even stylish, to hate America.  Lessons in humility are painful, but we were long overdue.  Since the mid-1980s we have been perfecting our swagger, dispatching it with greater flare each year, cocksure we had earned our arrogance while unaware of the slimy trail our flowing robes left behind.  All the evidence is there, anywhere you dare look – in politics, religion, business, sport, and entertainment – Americans have lost their sense of right and wrong.  Volume, vanity, violence, and vice are the values that guide us.  Dante would be proud.

            Seven years have passed and we all know the story.  Unfortunately, “Uh-Oh” proved an understatement.  A medley of hubris, fear, and avarice squandered America’s hard-won preeminence and placed America in crisis, both financially and morally.  However, I sense a turn – (hopefully) for the better – as we come to terms with our collapse of exceptionalism in often personal and painful terms.  We are, as Americans are so apt to do, reinventing our identity around new terms of fulfillment.  We are forging new relationships with new knowledge and remodeled identities that allow us to persevere and prosper.  We are realizing that a life of abundance – a full life – is not as fulfilling as being full of life. 

            The last two lines of a poem, written by Michael Earnest Henley in 1875, are on a stamped piece of metal that hangs on a chain around my neck – together with a compass rose.  The poem speaks volumes to me.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

           

            As we face the holiday season and year-end with all its disorientations and pretense, we must remain forever vigilant about whom we are and what we mean to others; we must take stock of the year and past decade and take our share of responsibility.  It is only then that hope can manifest its promises.  It is only then we can master our fate, and captain our soul.