From the V Sign to the Clenched Fist

From the V Sign to the Clenched Fist

There is a photo from the 1970s that shows two high school students sitting around doing what high school students tried to do in those days. To act cool and fail dismally in the process.

If you could see the photo and use your imagination, you may actually be able to work out who the gentleman on the right is. His hair is quite a different colour these days and there is much less of it.

The ‘V’ sign he is showing was all the rage in the late 1970’s. I think that it was supposed to stand for Victory but the significance has been lost to me over the years and no one seems to do ‘V’s anymore. Nor do we enjoy the peace that it signified or we hoped for. Over the decades we have learnt the hard, brutal, exhausting way that the victory of peace and stability are elusive commodities. Some would say they are unachievable.

Today, instead of showing a V sign or saying ‘Peace’, multiple groups punch the air with a clenched fist and chant ‘Fight’. It can’t be good for you, for the community or the world.

The old version of the guy in the photograph looks back on the fresh-faced version and whines that life seemed less contentious then. How swiftly do we seem to have gone from flower power to nuclear warheads, from a V sign to a fist?

We were probably naive, but that doesn’t mean we were wrong to aspire to a different world where dorky teenagers and even older grey-haired folk could just hang out, make peace signs, fail to be cool, but nevertheless be comfy in their school uniform. We must continue to choose the V sign over the clenched fist.