When the clock strikes twelve tomorrow night, we say goodbye not only to 2009 but to a decade. What are we going to call this decade of 2000 – 2009? The twenty hundreds? The two thousands?
Don’t forget – this decade isn’t just a decade too – its the first decade of the new millennium. I remember all that hype ten years ago on the eve of the new millennium. The entire world braced itself for the biggest technological crisis of all time – the Y2K meltdown.
Was JLo and “Waiting for tonight” also blaring on your TV screen that night? It seems like it was only yesterday, doesn’t it?
Well, the feared Y2K meltdown never occurred but the decade did bring far worse tribulations that would have made the Y2K crisis, had it happened, seem like just a little computer glitch. The defining moment of the decade, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, changed our lives forever.
This decade was so rough that TIME magazine in its recent issue dubbed it “the decade from hell”.
Bookended by 9/11 at the start and a financial wipe-out at the end, the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade […] in the post–World War II era.
Call it the Decade from Hell, or the Reckoning, or the Decade of Broken Dreams, or the Lost Decade.
Call it whatever you want — just give thanks that it is nearly over.
Goodbye to all that. TIME predicts that the next decade – the twenty-teens – would be better. Lets pray it is.
Happy TWENTY-TEN everyone and may the new year and the new decade bring us peace, love and better times.
