Expectations, Setting Us Up for Disappointment
I called on my friend Mr. Millennium recently, now that his big day is less than a thousand days off--and found him in an uncharacteristic funk. I mean he looked really depressed.
“What’s the problem, big guy?” I asked. I’d imagined that seeing the countdown of numbers on his wall drop a whole digit in length would have him in a party-hearty mood. Instead, he was just sitting on his couch, staring at one of the all-news channels on TV.
“Things are terrible,” Mr. Millennium grumbled morosely.
“What are you talking about?” I protested. “Everybody’s excited about the millennium. We can’t wait. Books about it, articles about it, TV specials. . . .”
“That’s the whole problem,” Mr. Millennium muttered. He reached behind him for another beer and gestured at the TV. “The news these days has been too good. The really exciting things are happening now, in ‘97, way too early. My big day is gonna be a huge letdown.”
He started ticking things off on his stubby fingers. “You have pictures coming in from Mars, a whole new planet, showing up on everyone’s TV and newspaper and computer screen on the Fourth of July. That’ll be boring by the year 2000. You have the stock market at an all-time high, and people are excited about it--they’ll be bored with that by then, too. The Supreme Court tells the government to keep its hands off cyberspace by striking down the Communications Decency Act--a huge free-speech victory. And to top it off, an astronaut and some cosmonauts were up in space together, sharing a ship whose name, Mir, by the way, means peace in Russian. This is what the Millennium is supposed to be like, man. It’s not fair.”
He was really whining now, and I didn’t know what to do to cheer him up. He had a point, I could see that--but I had to try. “Hey, look,” I suggested, “there’s still some fighting in the Middle East. Bombs still go off in Northern Ireland.”
Was I really listing calamities to cheer him up? “You can still buy guns and bullets legally in this country, and our system still legally puts people to death. A cure for cancer? There still are some milestones left for us to reach . . .”
“It’s no use!” he shouted, and I jumped toward the door lest he turn violent. “Crime is going down! Joe Camel is banned! Sheep have been cloned and the Millennium is just gonna be one big case of deja vu!.”
I split, then, realizing I’m not much good at consoling Epochal Events suffering through crises of self-esteem. But if you happen to see my pal Mr. Millennium, please try to convince him that things aren’t going as great for us these days as they seem. Because he’s right, you know--this is what the Millennium should feel like.
When the calendar finally gets around to throwing up that string of zeros, we will want to feel more than the vacant thrill of seeing a car odometer do the same thing. But by then, after all the buildup, how can we not feel “Been there, done that”? Like Mr. Millennium, we’ll still be hoping for something more exciting than a faint nostalgia for today’s legitimate exuberance--for days like these when history, though shy of round numbers, could still pack a thrill bigger than millennial disappointment.