I never really feel my age. Actually, that's not true. When I've spent too long driving and I have to uncurl myself from behind the wheel I do feel it. But most of the time I still feel young and fit. That's why it surprised me to see that John F. Kennedy would have been 100 years old on May 29th.

It surprised me because I remember the young president. Mainly I remember the day he died, because my mother cried on that day, something I rarely saw. I have a very vivid memory, at four years old, of sitting before the television with my brother, watching as the slain president's funeral cortege passed by. It's difficult to know what I truly remember after that because he has been in the news so much.

His death marked the beginning of a sad time in American history, when it seemed as if we lost our tolerance for discourse on political and philosophical differences, as JFK was followed in death by Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Bobby Kennedy. These days it's tough to get close to a sitting president, or any world leader for that matter, as extremists choose to make their statements by pointing a gun, or by bombing innocent people. The world feels like an increasingly dangerous place.

Statistics say that's not actually true, that we are safer today than we've ever been historically speaking. After all, half of the population of Europe was wiped out in a single battle with plague in the Middle Ages and two world wars wreaked their devastation in the modern era. Plus, people have always had the capacity for cruelty.

So, we're safer perhaps. But judging by what one reads on the internet and soundbites on the news, it seems we are becoming angrier day by day, and ruder, and less tolerant of opposing views.

Perhaps if we listened more and talked less. Too simplistic? Likely yes, but don't we have to start somewhere?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBiH5fsKJB8