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Too busy all the time to be seriously sad....
I like your perspective! Maybe if they were busy they wouldn't have been so sad, either! I was actually poor and couldn't abide wearing clothes that my poor parents would have thrown out though I did wear the wild colors and mesh hose. Hippies came into existence at the behest of another. It was easy to brainwash another person back then and make them think they were individuals when they didn't have an independent thought. The first hippy I knew had a following until he died a few years ago. I went to school with him, a chubby fun-loving guy engaged to another classmate. He went off to Viet Nam and I suspect he went through hell there and came back skinny, grew his hair and bacame what he was the rest of his life. He wasn't a bad guy and I liked him a lot. He visited me everytime he came to town, even after I was married with children. This guy had a wonderful family and homelife but it mattered little to him. As big as his cult-like following was, all of them were enablers. Most of them became the eighties yuppies. He had so much to offer but gave so little, refusing to accept responsibility to anyone, even his child (or children). He wasn't anti-social, even my father liked him, and wasn't a protestor, either. As a matter of fact, he never mentioned Viet Nam once since his return. Since his death, there is a rumor that he was actually a hero. Only his mother knows, and though I'm sure she would like the world to know, she will carry on his silence until her own death. I don't mean to put a damper on this thread but I have been thinking about this person a lot lately, and to me, he was a genuine hippy, not a passing thing among the youths of the sixties and early seventies. Even Manson wasn't a genuine hippy, but a crazy meglomaniac who should have been put to death.

Hey Jaidyn -- great to see ya here.

Isn't it sad how some people say a lot to other people without revealing themselves nor working through their problems, fears and guilt and finding a purpose for their lives? It sounds like your hippy friend had the gifts of gab and bluff, but never was able to really see and accept himself. We all have guilt for various things we've done and haven't done and denying the guilt, excusing it, blaming someone else, running away from it, hiding it... none of those tactics bring a healthy resolution and a chance to move on and beyond it.
I've known and talked to quite a few Vietnam vets and almost always their anxieties and frustrations are tied to some guilt from their experience. So many of them have been counseled to just not feel guilty, that they did what they had to or what everyone else did and guilt is inappropriate - but that doesn't resolve the real guilt that haunts them. They don't get to heal the guilt until they talk it out, ask and accept the unthinkable: forgiveness.