When Were "The Good Old Days?"
I remember being a kid, and even a teenager, and sitting in on family gatherings and listening to the adults talk about life and everything happening in the world around them.
Invariably, the conversation would shift to somebody waxing nostalgic and subsequently talking about something that happened in "the good old days."
Their good old days.
As a youngster, I didn't really have any good old days to compare to, but the adults sure made it sound like there was a time and place in life that was a lot better than the time we were having right now.
I got to thinking about it a little bit today as I contemplated the reality that I am now of an age where I would have been part of that group of older adults who reminisced about the good old days. That said, however, I also realized that I wasn't finding it particularly easy to come up with tangible examples of "good old days."
I suppose I could keep it nice and simple and simply declare that it was "the good old days" at a time when I didn't have to worry about bills and taxes and inflation and not feeling like I could ever afford my life, but that struck me as overly simplistic. It also seemed like a considerably different focal point from the adults I remember having their chats because they weren't generally talking about money, they were talking about life.
I do remember various occasions during my 30s and 40s where somebody would start talking about the good old days and I would — only half jokingly — declare that my good old days were still ahead of me.
Having now reached the somewhat ripe age of 65, I sincerely doubt that my good old days are still ahead of me, but I'm also not too sure where they might be hiding in my past.
I suppose if I were forced to come up with good old days, they would be the days before I had substantial responsibilities. But that seems rather inadequate because while I may not have had responsibilities, life wasn't particularly good.
In some ways, I think the myth of "good old days" fits somewhere on the spectrum of Human Experience next to the notion of "finding happiness."
We talk about happiness as this tangible thing that we can actually find and hold as ours in some permanent or semi-permanent state, but my experience with happiness has typically been that it comes in brief moments where everything seems to just come together in a state of perfection that lasts perhaps seconds or minutes, and then passes on as life resumes a sense of normalcy.
Somehow these brief moments of experience hold more weight in my memory than the fact that there was a time when I would pay $0.99 for a gallon of gas, or that eggs would be on sale at Safeway for 29 cents a dozen.
The thing about passing time is that we often end up looking backwards through the rose colored glasses of fading memory. We look backwards at things and they somehow feel like they were better than they really were. In truth, they really weren't all that great except for those occasional moments.
Of course, I say this knowing full well that everybody's experience is unique and different. I can only speak to my own experience, not to anyone else's.
Still, I do end up sitting back and pondering whether there was really anything there.
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2026.07.03 00:22 PDT
1585/2849
I remember some environmentalists did a survey to find out what people thought was the ideal temperature for different regions.
It turns out that people seem to remember their 17th year as being the ideal climate.
People who were 17 during a dry spell complained about all the flooding. People who were 17 during a rainy year complained of the drought.
Our late teens seem to set the benchmark of expectations.
!WINE
Agree with you here. I tend to do this. Not that I ignore the negative about the "old days" but would prefer not to focus on them.
As far as remembering as a kid the old folks talking about the good old days, I sure do. Now I seem to be one of those :)
Looking back the old times, we could pick some lessons from it. Lessons that might be helpful as we proceed on our journey.
Well, I guess that to what we old folks in general are referring to when we talk about "the good old days" it simply refers to those past times when we had no major responsibilities or obligations in life and felt that we could act more freely in the face of whatever came our way without fear of the consequences of our actions.
And not necessarily because the world in general was a better place to live, but because we, as young people who were just beginning to explore life without major responsibilities or obligations given that someone else (mostly our parents) they were already in charge of providing us with a stable roof over our heads, hot food on the table, clean clothes when we needed them and some sort of good instruction, formation and education.
The simple fact of not being subjected to the daily pressures and stress of having to cook to feed us, clean our place, wash & iron our clothes and having to do something substantial to generate income to keep that "stable" roof over our heads, all of that made us feel freer and more spontaneous to explore life as we were pleased and find our goals and objectives in a more relaxed way that finally made of those days "the good old days" about which we talk so much nowadays.
Moral of the story: I firmly believe and am now fully convinced, that it is precisely those days without responsibilities, obligations nor worries of any kind, those that every human being in their adult life, nearing retirement, unconsciously longs for to reach again in order to find and enjoy of plenty satisfaction, abundance, fullness and a longer, more lasting happiness. Therefore, not having to worry about anyone, nor anyone having to worry about us, could very well has been the goal we have all pursued throughout the years, but we have almost never realized it was.