Life is Unpredictable

Truly unpredictable. Things we see as constant today could be gone tomorrow and there’s truly no way of predicting what may come along to cause that.

My grandmother once told me about a newspaper headline from the New York Times. It said that Manhattan would be buried in horse manure very soon unless the borough underwent a massive infrastructure overhaul in order to facilitate prompt removal of tonnage of dookie off the streets. Heated debates sprung up as some suggested large sewage troughs beneath the sidewalks and others were insisting 10000 new street sweepers employed would be enough.

A year or so later Ford released the Model T. Suddenly in a few short years street sweepers were a thing of the past, horse hitches disappeared, and the equestrian industry that had been indispensable as an essential human commodity for anyone from farmers to diplomats had to reorganize itself around the idea that everyone didn’t need a horse.

Imagine the young men that had just become farriers thinking they’d have a set career, how frustrating and embarrassing it must have been.

My grandmother spoke often of such sudden and unimaginable changes, and of the people that struggled to adjust. One man was arrested for tying his horse to lamppost after the hitch poles were pulled up and the ensuing legal retribution created a spiral in the family that has left the family name to this day associated with crime.

It confuses me how the older generations seem so accustomed to change. Prepared for it even. But the generations to follow by and large seem to behave as if nothing ever changes.

The internet changed just about everything from how people find jobs to how they pay their taxes even how people found love.

In my lifetime I witnessed 9/11, an economic crash, a major pandemic, the beginnings of AI. One after another a sledge hammer came along and majorly reorganized how everything operates. The social paradigm of the 20th century was completely obliterated by 2010.

I grew up being raised to behave like it’s still 1985. Once I moved out I realized I’d been prepared for a dead version of society. Like one of those farriers seeing the model puttering around manhattan.