The Times They Are A Changin’ by Bob Dylan
or "What Happened to the 60’s?"

We thought we would do it all. We didn’t believe in limits, didn’t really understand them. What was the limit to what a person could achieve to what a person could change? Who but that person could set such a limit? What was the limit to what “we” could do? Did such a limit exist? No, we were going to, had already begun to transform the world. In our wake humanity would rise to the stars, would float with us to the very end of the rainbow.

What happened to the 60’s?

We thought we could have it all. A comfortable house filled with flowers from our garden, with our poetry and with the art we would discover in South America or Europe or Africa. A stimulating, creatively rewarding job helping to make the world a better place while giving us plenty of time to write our poetry and to travel. We would travel to discover art, art that we would purchase from local artisans helping them and their villages grow and flourish. At night we would sit with those artisans in smoky cafes or on starlit hillsides talking about the universe and writing poetry together.

What happened to the 60’s?

Music? We transformed music. Because of us music was both never the same and would always remain the same. With us music went places it had never been to find itself in a place it would surely never want to leave again.

What happened to the 60’s?

And “We,” we were always “we” always part of a greater whole, always part of an ideal. Was ever a generation more defined as “we” than “we” were? Was ever a generation gap more pronounced than the one separating us from our elders? It wasn’t that we excluded them; it was that they didn’t want to join us. Anyone was welcome to join us, join together with us, with “we” to change the planet. No, not the planet but space itself, time itself. We were on a stairway to heaven and everyone was welcome to rise up there with us.

What happened to the 60’s?

When did “we” become I, become me and mine? When did, “Power to the People,” become, “So is there a Whole Foods in your town yet?”

What happened to the 60’s?

How could we have known we would step off the stairway to heaven to find ourselves very much on earth? How could we have known we would change the world, revolutionize the world but not always in ways we understood or were proud of or had any control over?
How could we have known we would consume much more than we would produce? How could we have known that out here in the fields we would find global industries, mega farms not communes or local farmers?
How could we have known we would wrinkle, get flabby, have to deal with irritable bowels? How could we have known we would stop writing and too often even stop thinking about poetry?
How could we have known that “we”, forever young “we” would find living right in our own homes the Great Equalizer, the teenager?
How could we have known that a time would come when music would evolve, when the new Rolling Stones would finally emerge, artists with names like Public Enemy and Tupac but that “we”, open minded “we”, cool and mellow “we” would not recognize them for what they were. That instead we would hiss at them just as Ed Sullivan had hissed at the Rolling Stones all those years ago?

What happened to the 60’s?

Did we lose the 60’s? Are they gone forever? Or do they live on? Does some of what “we” were, who “we” were still flourish? I ask myself those questions, I ask myself if I am who I was, if 18 or 20 year old me would recognize or like 54 year old me. Sometimes I like the answer I hear, sometimes I don’t. And so I’ve decided to spend some time looking inside, looking to find a way to contact the 20 year old somewhere within and again touch some of his thoughts. Then, armed with some of those thoughts I will look at the world around me; the world around me then and the world around me now.

What happened to the 60’s? I wonder what I’ll find.