As I get older and have determined as a pert-near certainty that the time of my life will never pause or reverse itself, I increasingly find I am comparing life in America when I was a child with the great fears and uncertainties of now and tomorrow.
I get a lot of emails from my contemporaries (an odd word to apply to people well past midlife) which tickle my brain to call out my happy, youthful self and to remember:
…when Mom stayed home and cooked and cleaned while I went to school and Dad brought home the bacon.
…when every breakfast was eaten at the table with the whole family there to discuss their daily plans and hopes. We’d reconvene for dinner to discuss our daily achievements.
…when we had no virtual technological distractions except for three channels of black and white small screen miracles.
–when Sundays were for church and family; when nobody had what they wanted but everybody had all they needed.
You get those emails, too. They’re fun. But maybe the most engaging ones are those which remind us how much more safe and sane our old world seemed.
We didn’t have “drive-by” random murders in the fifties and sixties. Never.
None of my friends was ever snatched off the street by a gang-banger or boogie man.
None of the kids I knew was ever physically assaulted or molested. Not that I ever heard of, anyway.
Inevitably these journeys through the past offer us wistful glances of a world that was much easier to navigate and in which we could lay our heads at night, secure in the comfort and peace of our own bedrooms, on our Spin and Marty sheets and pillow cases, and with a quiet “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” we could revel in the day we just lived and exalt in the gift of yet another day tomorrow. And for all the tomorrows we could imagine and more.
So, here’s how I see it.
It doesn’t matter when you were born. My four and six-year-old grandsons will have the same wondrous journeys and make the same magical memories as I did, and as did my father and grandfather before me. And fifty years from now they’ll tell their kids and grandkids how primitive life was in the early twenty-first century.
And they’ll love the memories.
No time is better than another. The magic lies in being young enough to have nothing with which to compare it.
I hope you’re right. I hope our grandchildren will remember their early years fondly, all bathed in pastels. But – Dave – I have some serious doubts. I think our memories had a longer, sweeter shelf-life because we could rewrite them. Today’s kids have every thought, every whim, recorded on the internet – and once it’s on the internet, it’s forever. Not so many opportunities to rewrite. l
I hope I’m right, too.
I’m just basing my hope on my understanding of human nature, not the technology.
A few decades ago I was greatly moved by John Naisbitt’s realistic assessment of our future and at the same time by Richard Bach’s imaginings of the human spirit.
If I am to sit in a rocker soon I need to have a smile on my face. I must believe.
PS. My grandfather never saw nor imagined the Internet. And you and I cannot conceive of how our grandchildren and theirs will exchange their hearts and imaginations.
If they fail to find a way there will be no need for them to continue.
I think it all depends on how you were raised. My life was so much different than yours, and there is only 5 years difference between us. We ate dinner at the table true but it wasn’t always so nice and breakfast you got yourself some cereal. And because of the media you didn’t hear about molesting but it was still going on. There was still people murdering people but you didn’t hear about it on a daily bases on the news with graphic display like you do now. We take from our memories what we want to take. Growing up in the same house with my brothers we all three have different memories or what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget. I think Anita nailed it when she said you can’t rewrite it now with the internet. If you don’t want it remembered don’t post it. It you don’t want to see your business on the net don’t undress for that “special” guy with is cell phone at arms reach. Call me cynical but the age of computers has lost the youth of today the age of innocence. I do love your optimism my dear husband, that’s why I love you.