The Before Times and the Now-a-Days

When did it first occur to you?  I’m not sure when the realization crystalized for me.  In retrospect, there were probably no moments of clarity or flashes of understanding.  Most, but not all, of the time it was more of a slow but constant feeling of change that eventually evolved into a new level of conscious awareness.  Sort of like how Bob Penuelas’s comic about the evolution of a beach town shows it. (see it here)

Reflecting more…these feelings of change…of the before and now…seem to happen multiple times during one’s life.  You know, at life events and such…first time away from home alone at summer camp, puberty, dating, drivers license, moving away from home, job to a career, marriage, family, retirement, old age…that kind of stuff.  Also…personal tradgedies like severe illnesses, hospitalizations, car crashes, or deaths in the family type of events.  Lastly there are man made and natural epochal events like wars, industrialization, global warming, hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves and such.

Ironically, even though a true universal constant is change, we humans seem to strive for consistency, sameness if you will.  We appear to stucture our lives for predictability.  Maybe that is why chain stores like Starbucks and McDonalds have been so successful.  No matter where one goes, the menu is basically the same…a known quantity in an unfamiliar place.  Comfort amid different and maybe kind of strange surroundings.

Perhaps that is one reason why so many folks harbor a nostalgia for the “good old days” and want things the way they were in “simpler times.”  At one point in the 1970s, there was even a television show that harkened back to the Happy Days of the 1950s.

What is also interesting is how easy it is to forget the “before times” while living in the now.  At least for some people it seems easy.  For example: How many “Baby Boomers” rely on many of the current modern conveniences available to them?  Hint: a lot.

Most of us have continued to adapt to new ways of doing things all our lives, some better than others.  However, that is a different story.  PS: Adapting to new situations is generally a good thing….very Darwinian…adapt or die, right?

For others, well they just do not know any different.  For example: the last few years of my teaching career, from say 2010 to 2014, none of my middle school students experienced a time before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.  The post 9-11 world was the totality of their entire reality.

The same thing could be said for “smart” phones or the internet today.  Here is an interesting video (about 10 minutes) that compares the first iPhone and the first Android.  Do YOU remember when they first arrived on the scene? Funny to think how dramatically these devices have changed over such a short time.

You may rightly ask, where exactly is this blog entry headed?  Good question.

Here are several of my “take aways” from the general topic of the “Before Times” and the “Now-a-Days.”  As stated earlier, one universal constant is change and no matter what we do or want…change will occur.  Also, humans crave consistency and predictability in the face of the inevitability of change.  Therefore, we constantly try to keep things the same, consciously or not. Communication between generations regarding life before the now, human history if you will, can be challenging because the youngest among us only know life in the now and not the before.  Often, young folks find reviews of the “before times” rather uninteresting and quite immaterial to their lives in the “now.” Finally, although change is inexorable, many future transformations are alterable to some extent because we can see them coming.  There is some forewarning.  Global warming is a prime example of this type of change.  Many scientists have seen it coming for awhile now, while others less scientifically inclined do not seem to accept it’s reality.  Hopefully, we as a species do not end up victims of the “boiled frog” syndrome (shown below). PS: Do not worry, no frogs were harmed in the filming of this video.