Of Bears and Penguins

1987 - I was four, and I knew Ronald Reagan was President.
It's a shame that people my age weren't made to study great speeches in school, or made to study more the important events that happened in our own lives.
I do remember the Berlin Wall coming down, and young as I was, it was impossible not to see the fervor and passion of that moment.
And then suddenly there was no more U.S.S.R. No more communism, no more great enemy to oppose.
It would be different, I imagine, for someone who had grown up doing duck and cover drills. Today's speech must have been the long culmination of that yearning from freedom, of that desire to thwart communism, of the end of the fear of the bomb.
Think, think of the people in the crowd that day - who were they? There were children, yes. And I hope there were older people that would have been like my parent's friends Rosa and Jope - who had experienced the war in terrible ways. I hope there were others, vetrans of the Weimarcht, but of course they would have only fought on the Eastern front. Who were the people that day who waved American and German flags and roared loudly enough for Mr. Gorbachev to hear President Reagan's invitation. Is there today someone in Berlin who is looking at someone my age and saying, "You know, I was there that day - that day when he said, 'Open this gate, tear down this wall.' "
It's enobling - the great battles always are - no there's no glory in war, nor should it be romanticized - but there are things worth battling, and things for which it is right to battle. It lifts the spirit to fight for a cause that is greater and broader than oneself.
But what is my generations cause, to what are we called to? It is murky to me - there seems no unifying force, and no call to reach beyond ourselves. We were not a generation taught that sacrifice for others is good, we were the generation that was told we could be anything, do anything, have anything, have it all. There's little nobility in that - only grabbing for what you think you ought to have, and a blubbery sense of entitlement.
You can't create moments like today's speech out of whole cloth - it was right that Germany said no to Mr. Obama's idea to speak there. A request that came not out of a long, hard fight, but out of perhaps, a blubbery sense of entitlement.
What will be the great fight of my generation?
There are those in my circle of friends who don't get my passion for the Olympics - listen to this speech and then you will. The games are and should be about so much more than who breaks the tape. For President Reagan, it was about the ability of one moment to transcend that impenatrable iron curtain and unite briefly the whole world in common purpose. Higher, faster, stronger indeed.
And then we come to the end of his speech - where he speaks about the television tower, which I read got nicknamed the Pope's revenge, because of the shadow of the cross it made. Reagan invokes the image as a symbol of love that cannot be surpressed by the strongest of the strong arms.
It's love, Reagan says, that makes them stay in a city that's difficult to live in.
Isn't that what makes any of us stay, isn't love always what gives us the courage to go farther than we think we can. Isn't it love that refines our character, that polishes and shines to a gleam our roughest edges.
Of course it is.