Those were the times, weren't they?

I was talking with some friends the other day, an older couple, and they began to tell me how things have changed so much, that life is not like it used to be, and then it came, that dreaded phrase, that which makes me cringe... The Good Old Days. I listened politely while my mind wandered off. I courteously nodded my agreement, and discreetly got called away to another conversation.

What good old days do folks so fondly remember? Exactly when were those times that everyone remembers so fondly? Was it the seventies? How can those days be considered good? Just look at the clothes. How can anyone remember how good the seventies were because so many people were so high all the time?

Perhaps the sixties were the good old days. When the country was on the verge of disintegrating over Vietnam, with civic and political assassinations, riots in the streets. Did we forget that so quickly?

In the fifties, rock and roll was coming on strong, and the folks longed for those days before Elvis could swing his hips on the TV and before all these kids went crazy. Surely the fifties were not the good old days.

Was the nineteen forties the good old days, when the entire world was at war? When there was rationing, shortages, and telegrams expressing the deepest sympathy of our country?

Shall we continue? Was it the thirties, when unemployment was at 30%, when the middle of our country was a dust bowl, when the entire world was in an economic depression? The twenties, during the era of prohibition in which the common man became a criminal, and the criminals were the law?

When were those good old days that are so fondly remembered? Before indoor plumbing? Before electricity? When we lived in caves and hunted in tribes? How far back do we need to go to get to the good old days? What exactly are we longing for?

Instead of pining away for that which never existed, might we instead just begin to make these days better? Can't we just live to make today the best we can make it? Why don't we instead try to get some control over our lives today, try to spend this day a little more constructively. Maybe tomorrow will be the best days ever, if you and I will just work toward making it so.

God Bless You.
Brian