The Good Old Days Aren't for Everyone
Some people can afford to wax nostalgic about everything. Most can't.
I am by nature a nostalgic person. It doesn’t take much – old movies, old television shows, old music, to bring back old memories.
Memories are funny. They take you back to specific segments of time. The good, bad, and in between. But memories don’t take everything into account.
I remember family gatherings around the holidays. I remember the great food, the laughs, the love, and the sense of stability and permanence you get when being around relatives who love and care about you.
I treasure the memories of going to the movies in my high school years with my sisters and my best friend. We saw mostly great movies, made fun of each other, laughed and joked with each other. We were the Four Musketeers.
Those particular times were good.
But for me, life overall wasn’t good.
I was chronically ill.
Overly shy and sensitive.
And nervous and insecure about everything.
As a whole, my life stunk.
But certain times were great and rate as precious with the passing of time.
Because my mom has been dead ten years.
My dad has been gone nine years.
My oldest brother has been gone for six years.
My best friend has been dead for almost three years.
Thinking back to those precious times, no matter how sick I might have been at the time, no matter how much I was in my own head about life, those times seem so magical that I almost wish I could relive them.
Almost because of the sick, sensitive, insecure parts.
My life today is decidedly imperfect, but it’s the best life I’ve lived.
Even with incalculable losses, the ravages of time and aging, and the uncertainty of the future, the best time of my life is now.
I’m far from alone.
Now is the best time of life for People of Color, who have endured slavery, Jim Crow, and separate and unequal.
Things are far from perfect, but if you asked a Black person from one hundred and seventy years ago and asked them if they’d trade places with a Black person living today, they’d agree to the deal before you finished asking the question.
Ask most women if they would rather be living today or forty years ago, and they will tell you that while the patriarchy is far from dead, its tyranny was more prevalent then than now.
The “good old days” philosophy is the provenance of White men.
They long for the days when darker-skinned people, women, and foreigners “knew their place.”
Those memories are comforting to White men.
Racism was much more acceptable.
Sexism wasn’t even sexism – it was the “natural order of things.”
Xenophobia, homophobia, all the phobias were the norm in the “good old days.”
Equality for anyone not White or male is long overdue.
Preconceived notions have not die off.
Prejudice is alive and well.
Tribalism is living and active.
But even so…
We are better off today than we were not that long ago.