Lessons Learned from Nostalgia

My mother spent her teenage years being raised in a one room house with four brothers and one sister and, of course, her parents.  Seven people in a tiny white house with red trim.  It had no running water and, believe it or not, the phone was an old party line.  For you younger readers, a party line is like a landline but instead of having multiple phones plugged in throughout your house there were multiple phones plugged in around the neighborhood.  Everyone shared the line.  Anyone could listen in on the line. 

But that was the house she grew up in.  A well pump out by the barn and an outhouse out back. 

I remember the house from a trip “home” we made when I was quite young.  I remember the closeness and the coziness.  I remember the flower beds of petunias and marigolds.  I remember a huge garden.  I remember how clean everything was.  My grandparents didn’t have much but my grandmother was still incredibly house proud. 

I often think about that little house and how nice it would be to recreate that kind of lifestyle.  Simple.  Stripped down.  Not a lot of rushing around.  If you don’t have much, you don’t have much to worry about. 

Truth be told, I think a lot about the fact that it feels like I was born at the wrong time.  I think I could definitely be at home growing up in the 1940’s like my parents.  Or even the 1840’s with the first people settling in my corner of the United States.  I dream of living in a time when things were simpler.  The complications of modernity left behind as I travel back to a time when politics weren’t so ridiculous, the nightly news wasn’t so dire, and people were better connected.

But I think that this kind of romantic nostalgia is a trap.  If you turn back the clock, you will inevitably lose progresses that have been long fought for:  Civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, medical advancements, and so on.  But, still there is something incredibly appealing to me about not having an electric bill every month and growing my own food.

I think what’s at the crux of my desire isn’t so much wanting to undo time but to bring elements of the past forward to replace those things about 21^st century society that make me so crazy.  When we look back through time we have the benefit of an objectivity people in the past didn’t have.  We can see why and how mistakes were made but we can also observe the successes that people at the time took for granted.  The same will be true about us, today, fifty years from now.  I would like nothing better than to draw those successes forward and replace those things that I think we can all acknowledge have been failures in our current time. 

·        Insane, radical, polarizing political leaders running campaigns not even close to being grounded in reality.

·        A deeper connection not only with the people around you but the place you’re in; there was no large scale food contamination scares based out of a processing plant in California and affecting lives across the country—food production was local if not right at home.

·        Education made sense—there were no modern gimmicks or trendy titles designed to make someone somewhere a name for themselves and a boatload of money to boot.  Education was a privilege and not a burden. 

·        People didn’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home that they then would spend the next forty years paying for by spending more time at work than in their new home.  I think this is one of the things that drives me the most crazy about our society today.

·        People weren’t so driven by consumerism.  It wasn’t a plastic, disposable culture in the past.  There was a lot of “waste not, want not” mentality that was born in the depression and reinvigorated during World War II.  But there was also pride in craftsmanship and if something was damaged or broken it wasn’t simply thrown out to be replaced by the next big thing from the closest big box store. 

I could keep going but you get the idea.  And, besides, this is my list.  I’m sure if you thought about it you could come up with your own list about things you would like to see us return to as a society.  Like the old saying goes, “We all have our good old days tucked away in our hearts and we return to them in our daydreams like cats to favorite armchairs.”

And, look, I know that life in the past wasn’t as good as my imagination would make it out to be.  I know that life for my grandparents in their little, one room house with six children wasn’t all summer picnics by fragrant flowerbeds.  I know that life was hard and sacrifices had to be made in order for ends to meet.  But, still, I know there are things about the past that could definitely benefit us today. 

I think some people get this.  I think some people engage in their own personal revolts against the failings of the changing tides.  People are going “off grid,” transitioning to a sustainable lifestyle.  More and more people grow a portion of their own food and farmers markets are becoming more of a regularity than a peculiarity.  People are realizing that more isn’t better and that the high-paying job that gives you the corner office isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. 

But these personal revelations and revolutions still aren’t addressing the larger problems in our society—like our politics, our healthcare system, our education system, our environmental impact….

I honestly don’t know what the solution is to these big issues.  I do know that our leaders aren’t going to solve the problem because they have a vested interest in the chaos.  As long as things are a disaster, they can use the disaster to play politics by blaming “the other party.”  They can also make some extra cash through the lobbyists who buy votes for one corporation or another. 

It’s this feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that turns my mind back to that little white house with red trim and a desire for simpler days.  I want to retreat from the situation and the problem that seems unsolvable.  I want to throw in the towel, stop caring, stop worrying, and slip off the grid and let the world continue on while I find purpose and meaning in a little bubble of time that insulates me from the insanity outside my door. 

I just can’t seem to do it, though.  I just can’t seem to stop caring long enough to make that drastic change in my lifestyle.  It’s not just because I’m wired to care, that everything about me is geared to fighting against injustice and fighting for the recognition of the individual’s humanity no matter how despised they are by segments of our society.  I think it’s an obligation, as a member of the human race, to care and to struggle against these failings and strive for a better world despite our leaders. 

I think that this is one clear lesson we can learn from our past.  We have to meet adversity and injustice head on lest it overpower us and we become something we despise.  This is what has happened to us today; for too long we have become complacent, deferring to leaders who really don't have our best interests at heart and who no longer know how to fix the damage our apathy and their greed have caused.  

And so I find that I can't check out of the mess.  I have to fight.  I have to speak.  I have to struggle against the winds of change that blow no good while celebrating the small victories we are able to achieve.

That doesn’t mean I have to stop dreaming about my own little red and white house, though.  We all need safe harbors in storms.