This, That, and the Other

For today’s Sunday Poser, Sadje wants to know…

Do you think of your past as the “Good old days”?

From a short-term perspective, I think of the days before January 14, 2023, the day I fell off a ladder and broke my left hip and my right humerus at the shoulder, as the “good old days.” I was able-bodied, could walk without a cane, and had full movement of my right arm and shoulder, without pain and fatigue.

I could go on long walks with my wife and our dog. I could ride my e-bike, sit in a car for more than an hour without my leg aching, and be able to get down on my hands and knees to play with my grandkids. So yes, relative to 2023, 2022 was the good old days.

But that’s not the question Sadje is really asking, is it? I think she’s asking about our more distant past. Like when we were growing up or as younger adults. I would say that those were simpler times. Our world was much smaller back then. There were no 24×7 cable news networks bombarding you with constant and almost instant bad news. There was no internet, no Google, no social media spreading misinformation and/or conspiracy theories. People wrote letters and called friends on the phone to share what was going in their lives.

I won’t go so far as to say it was all peace, love, and kumbaya back in the day. But it seemed to me that, perhaps with the exception of race relations in the U.S., we were less divided, less intractable, than we are today.

I don’t know. Maybe I am looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Or maybe I’m looking at the present and future through shit-stained lenses. But I believe I’m standing at the precipice of the fall of the democratic republic of the United States and of our home planet’s ability to support and sustain human life.

So yes, from that perspective, the past is, indeed, the “Good Old Days.”