I was one of millions of Baby Boomers who entered the 60s as unknowing, benign peasants and who emerged a decade or so later changed in ways they never could have imagined.

We lived through the Bobby, Jack, and Martin assassinations, a moon landing, Muhammed and the Beatles, folk music, women’s lib, and 56,000 dead in a Southeast Asia swampland. We came out of that time a changed people, a battered and suspicious people, a people roiling from fears, frustrations, and hope denied. I don’t think I recognized it at the time, as a teenager, but I came to recognize what an enormously important time the 60s were. I remain oddly proud to have lived through them.

We are again, without question, in the midst of major, wide-ranging, social and personal metamorphoses. I hope everyone, especially those in the 15- to 30-year-old range, appreciates it and takes advantage of all this era has to offer. They — and we — are witnessing events that will change their very being.

I appeal to young people everywhere to look around.

Look at what’s happening in the policing community. Policing in five or ten years will be radically different from now and, I pray, far, far better.

See the tide turning toward greater acceptance of the LGTBQ community.

Observe the national political community wrestling with a system much too broken for far too long.

Pay attention to these critical events. Read about them. Watch them unfold. And whenever possible, experience them.

March.

Picket.

Blog, tweet, post.

Make your voice heard.

The times they are a-changin’, and you should be part of them. Times like these come around only rarely, and you’re in one of them.

How very lucky for you — and for all of us.