Remember When?
Remember When…
Remember when a Big Mac was Big.
When a new shirt lasted more than two washings.
When a phone bill wasn’t as much as a car payment and a car payment wasn’t as much as rent and rent wasn’t as much as a mortgage.
Remember when you could get a mortgage.
Remember when Kool-Aid was a drink and not a hair color.
When people didn’t dress like slobs to fly on a plane.
When there were only five channels on T.V. and it was not only free but seemed to be enough.
Remember when you didn’t have to press 1 for English.
When a job at a fast food place was an entry level job for a teenager and not meant to support a 40 year old with a family of five.
When you bought a bag of potato chips and there were more chips than air in the bag.
Remember when a flash mob was a group of streakers and not a gang looting a mall.
When you had to think of the answer and not Google it.
Remember when Hollywood had some imagination.
When a blind date was meeting someone in person and not online where you have no idea if it’s really who they say they are.
When shoplifting wasn’t a sport.
Remember when “your truth” was called an opinion.
When we passed around notes in class instead of nude photos on a phone.
When a human actually answered the phone.
Remember when tents were for camping, not used on city sidewalks for housing.
When you waited to get on the subway instead of pushing someone in front of it.
Remember when you bought the album Dark Side of the Moon, and then the 8-Track, then the cassette, then the Compact Disc, and now pay to stream it without owning anything at all.
When you saved up the money to buy a car instead of carjacking one.
When we played hide and seek or freeze tag instead of punching an old person in the head and filming it.
When committing a crime had consequences.
Remember when we loved our country and we just knew the next generation would have an even better life than us?
You may think I’m looking into the past with rose colored glasses but I’m not. This country has had it’s share of problems and mistakes but it always will. We’re not perfect people and this is not a perfect nation.
But something has changed. We’re drowning in indifference, entitlement, victimhood, greed, a lack of self worth, cynicism, pessimism, barbarism, narcissism, or to quote the great Ferris Bueller, “any ism for that matter”. The country feels like it is falling apart.
A great friend of mine once said the Constitution only guarantees the “pursuit” of happiness, not that happiness is guaranteed.
The American experiment is the next evolutionary step from The Renaissance and Enlightenment periods but it doesn’t have to be a zero sum game between enlightenment and spirituality. However, the political Romanticism of the 19th century seems to have made a comeback today with its ideals of breaking free of the classical structures of reason, rules and well defined behavior.
America was founded with the emphasis on individual freedoms as Romanticism yearned for, but it was predicated on the reality that so much freedom would only work if it’s citizenry shared a common set of ethics, morals and social norms. And work it did.
Nowhere else in the world did people from other countries, religions, races or political backgrounds come together as one nation and with hard work, persistence and some self sacrifice, create a prosperous life for themselves and their families while building the most powerful and prosperous nation in history.
It’s up to us to recapture that happiness and pride in our country. It still takes hard work. There are no “safe spaces” or guarantees of any kind. We are not entitled to anything and our government owes us nothing more than security and a level playing field. You’re not a victim and the world doesn’t revolve around you. Self worth and confidence is a result of accomplishment, not likes or followers.
We can earn, accomplish, prosper and gain without it being at the expense or detriment of someone else.
A wise Vulcan once said, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” We all have our differences, that’s what makes us unique individuals, but those differences can’t become impediments to the greater social structure. Jesus said in Mark 3:25, “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
Whether you want to believe in God or not, we need to return to our Judeo-Christian social structure in order to end the “pursuit” of happiness and actually attain it.
The American Dream worked when we treated others as we would want to be treated. We worked for ourselves and for the greater good. We built this country with hard work and a common set of morals and ethics. We knew right from wrong.
That’s what I remember.