When the world seems an unfixable mess
Billy Joel was on to something. Here’s what we can do about it
While Billy Joel was in the studio recording an album in 1989, he encountered a 20-something who lamented the state of the world in which he was coming of age. The 20-something observed that Joel’s generation of Baby Boomers had it easier since they had grown up in a more idyllic time.
Joel’s recollection of his formative years differed: “I remember when I was 21–I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y’know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.”
So Joel, a self-proclaimed history nut, got to work, composing a rebuttal in the form of a song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He managed to work in more than 100 references to significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events that had transpired between his birth year, 1949, and the year the song was written, mostly in chronological order.
Many of the people and moments commemorated in the song were far from idyllic. Joe McCarthy, the anticommunist fearmonger. North Korea invading South Korea. The H-bomb. Trouble in the Suez. The Little Rock desegregation crisis. Starkweather homicide. The Ole Miss race riot. A British politician’s sex scandal. JFK blown away. Watergate. The Ayatollah in Iran. Russians in Afghanistan. Heavy metal suicide. Homeless vets. AIDS. Crack. Hypodermics on the shore. China under martial law.
Some critics panned “We Didn’t Start the Fire” as one of Joel’s worst songs. (One described it as a U.S. history lesson on Adderall.) Though the song’s lack of musical structure was intentional to create a sense of overwhelm, Joel himself acknowledged, “The melody by itself [is] terrible. Like a dentist drill.”
Nevertheless, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” became one of only three Billy Joel singles to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. Clearly the song’s premise–that no one generation is the first to unleash a string of horrors on humankind–resonated.
Joel said of the tune, “It’s just a song that says the world’s a mess. It’s always going to be a mess.”
He’s right. Turmoil has been a constant throughout history.
When it feels like the wheels are coming off
2025 seems to bring a fresh set of headlines every day reminding us there’s always something to feel uneasy about.
A proliferation of A.I.-enhanced propaganda on social media. Political assassinations. Growing evidence that many believe the truth no longer matters. Congressional maps reconfigured to stack the deck in favor of a particular political party remaining in control. American citizens arrested and detained without cause. Growing threats from extremism. Outbreaks of diseases once considered eradicated. The normalization of racist rhetoric. Politicians who care more about staying in power than serving the public. Unregulated A.I. threatening to overwhelm the world as we know it.
The 24/7 news cycle and all those notifications amplify the horror. For many people, the chaos of the world seems worse than it’s ever been in their lifetimes.
And yet, while recently reading books and streaming documentaries about the ‘60s, it occurred to me how it must have seemed to my parents like the wheels were coming off back then.
The Cuban Missile Crisis bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. A young president assassinated, ending the era some described as Camelot. Protests, riots, and violent skirmishes regularly breaking out over Civil Rights. America mired in the Vietnam War. The leader of the Civil Rights Movement assassinated. A presidential candidate assassinated. The Establishment and the Counterculture continually skirmishing over social norms.
My arrival on the scene mid-decade and my young age shielded me from much of the tumult my parents experienced. But things must have seemed really terrible back then.
It might have seemed like a horrible time to start a family. And yet as I prowl through my parents’ photo albums, there’s no evidence of the turmoil unfolding in the world at the time.
My parents decided to press on despite it all, and so must we.
Choose hope
Arthur C. Brooks says there’s a word for believing you can make things better without distorting reality–it’s not optimism, but rather hope. He says that people tend to treat the words as synonyms, but that isn’t accurate. According to Brooks, optimism is the belief that things will turn out all right; hope, on the other hand, makes no such assumption but is a conviction that one can act to make things better in some way.
Hope is the prudent choice for our time. If you believe you are in this world at this particular time in its history for a reason, you should also trust that you are equipped to, in some way, make a difference.
Each of us is born with the ability to sense right from wrong and the power to choose and make decisions. We come equipped with the ability to act in some capacity for the good of humankind and counteract the negative forces around us. If we put the talents we were gifted with to work, we can be a positive force in the world.
The other day, I came across a headline that reminded me, “If we desire a peaceful world, there is much work to be done.” Here’s what the writer, Kerry Weber, had to say in her reflection:
“In these troubling times in our country and our world, it is understandable that we might feel like it’s easier to give up, to give in to the anger and the hate and despair that feel so prevalent and pervasive. But the Gospel also reminds us: ‘Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.’ If we desire a world of peace, of love, there is much work to be done. And it is our job as servants of God to do it, not because we seek power or glory but because it is the right thing to do.”
No matter how bad things might seem on any given day, it’s our job to do what we can, however we can, to make the world a little bit better. We can’t let the bastards–whoever we may believe them to be–get us down.
We still have our wild and precious lives to live, and we have to trust that there’s a reason why we’ve been born into the world to face this particular moment.
Just because we can’t single-handedly fix everything doesn’t mean we can’t fix anything. As Mother Teresa said, Go find your own Calcutta.
It’s also Election Day in America, so be sure to get out and exercise your right to choose who will work on our collective behalf.
As we press on in the face of present difficulties, it’s worth remembering a line from another Billy Joel song, “Keeping the Faith”: “The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.”
Why having kids live miles and time zones away isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be
On this week’s episode of the Midlife Momma podcast, I had the pleasure of discussing how to stay close when your kids move far away with Pamela Henkelman. I revealed the biggest misconception I had about having grown kids who settle far from home, and we explored how to accept and embrace a new season of life. Click to have a listen.
