Thursday, April 14, 2011

Is Today the Makings of a Future Nostalgia?....

When I do my running/walking routine at night-time, I get a good opportunity to sneak a peek at the lives of the many lower-middle class people living around me (I, too, of course, am lower-middle class).

While I (silently) huff and puff and (loudly) clomp by, the open windows of bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens reveal the mundane life that seems to be led by all: half-dressed (yet not scandalously clad) people, exhausted, with a computer open (likely perpetually) to Facebook and a television to watch from their perch on the couch; a person rinsing a dish; the light ring of a the a (nearly defunct) landline phone in the distance; the sound of muffled music. Will this life be what I, when I am older (should I grow to be older), look back on and miss as "the good old days?"

Will there come a time where I will wish for the quaintness of the days when every 10 year old lusted after a needlessly high-tech and expensive cell phone? Will I grow misty-eyed thinking of the days when our grandparents still had house phones and sent emails? Will I look back with a smile on the mass exodus first to MySpace and then to Facebook and all the junk that emerged via those routes? Will I laugh at my own silliness in recording thoughts on a blog- or, even more depressingly, paper?

I won't know today, nor tomorrow. But perhaps someday...

Yet I fear I shall be the first generation that lacks an age of innocence, no matter how ultimately untruthful that term is, to admire.

2 comments:

Marvin said...

Oooh, lovely new template. Very pretty.

I look at people at night, too, as I walk down the street. It's interesting to see how they relax in their homes.

chokingplanet said...

It's an interesting question you pose to yourself. Every generation finds the times of their adolescence to be boring and pointless — then later as something that was spiritual and progressive. There is no way to know which of the two is more true, but chances are that we all place too much importance on the events that surround our own times, and too little on history past and future.