by Joelle Steele

I am so tired of social media posts about how sad it is that they don’t teach cursive handwriting in school anymore, and what a shame it is that kids don’t dress up for school anymore, and blah, blah, blah. Wake up people! Times change and things change. Nothing sad about that. I don’t want to get stuck “back there” with these people who are constantly mourning the passage of time, or worse yet, trying to politically revert to a past era. You can’t live in the past and you don’t want to get trapped in the nostalgic idea that those were the good old days, because they were anything but. Read a current history book and it will open your eyes.

Despite the many horrors that continue to besiege the world, we are still better off than we have been. We are living the good old days RIGHT NOW. Every day is a gift, and it’s a potential good-old-day in the making. If you put your effort into recapturing the past and reliving it, you won’t be able to enjoy what’s right in front of you today. And I find something to enjoy in every single day. I’m fine with talking about the past, but I don’t want to live in it or go around wishing it was the quaint old Victorian era (which was not all that great, especially for women, but has been glamorized in TV and movies), or that it was 1968 again (I was there, it was a fun time, but I don’t need a re-run of it). And there has been plenty of good music since the 1950s and 60s (but you have to search for it). So I have no complaints about TODAY. I’m happy right where I am, whenever NOW is.

And, I especially wouldn’t want to be 15 or 25 or 35 again – although I wouldn’t mind having the body of a 25 year-old again! Life is so much easier as you get older. You know who and what you are. You know what you want out of life. You’ve (hopefully) learned from your mistakes. You know what’s important, what really matters. You’ve got your priorities straight. And you have the best understanding of how the world works. And there’s always something new happening to learn about and enjoy. We are where we are today because of the PAST. But we should be living in the NOW, living for TODAY and embracing the promise of TOMORROW. If you don’t like your life, CHANGE IT NOW!