We are Hope Despite the Times
I’ve been listening to Peter Ames Carlin’s 2024 biography of R.E.M., called The Name of this Band is R.E.M. It’s not simply a biography of an indie rock band, it’s a cultural trip through the turbulent 1980s.
I grew up immersed in the music of R.E.M., probably one of the most influential alternative rock bands in music history. They played my college campus three of the four years I was there, and I’ll never forget the thrill of seeing them live.
R.E.M.’s lyrics and driving beats spoke to our generation, the Gen X-ers whose childhoods were shaped by threats of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, South African apartheid, the shift from a “we” to “me” society, the rise of take-no-prisoners conservatism, and global disasters like the Mount St. Helens eruption and Chernobyl’s nuclear reactor explosion.
As a kid who grew up in the 1980s, the current time feels like living in a parallel reality; one with more technology and (hopefully) more grownups who care.
Social media likes to emphasize that we Gen X-ers were latch-key kids with little supervision. That narrative neglects the fact that the world was on fire at the time (or, that’s what it felt like to us). Bands like R.E.M. captured our angst, our grief, our outrage, and our collective refusal to look away from the problems we faced.
We might not have had parental oversight, but we had each other.
Check out this video from R.E.M.’s 1986 concert tour. The first song is “These Days,” a banger with lyrics that couldn’t be more relevant today, even though they were released nearly thirty-nine years ago. For a cleaner version, here’s the link to the recorded version.
As you listen to the song, I invite you to belt out these lyrics with everything you’ve got:
All the people gather
Fly to carry each his burden
We are young despite the years
We are concerned
We are hope despite the times
All of a sudden, these days
Happy throngs, take this joy
Wherever, wherever
Does it give you hope? Make you want to cry? Call you to thrash around like you’re in a mosh pit?
It does all those things for me.
I’m not sure if this is a theme in my life, but my appreciation for R.E.M. and their ability to offer hope to us in the 80s when we felt helpless is akin to my love of Shakespeare and his ability to do the same during his plague-ridden, polluted, and politically pugnacious era.
Like R.E.M., Shakespeare knew that the key is in the “we”:
“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” Hamlet, act I, scene 3
What do we do when our circumstances overwhelm us and we feel paralyzed by uncertainty?
Gather with our friends, keep them close (with loyalty as strong as hoops of steel), carry each other’s burdens, and take our joys, however small they may be, wherever we go.
We are hope despite the times.
For more inspirational wisdom from R.E.M., check out their album, Life’s Rich Pageant, especially These Days, Begin the Begin, and Fall on Me.
And if you want to dig into Shakespeare’s take on tackling tough times, check out Shakespeare’s Guide to Living the Good Life: Life Lessons for Comedy, Tragedy, and Everything in Between.
Do you have a favorite R.E.M. song or album? Let me know!