Lately I have been hearing people say things like "I wish we could just go back to how things used to be." or "I wish I could be that age again." This desire for a RESET always makes me shake my head, because in fact, that can never happen. You can't undo everything that has happened and just plop yourself back in the spot you were and somehow expect you will end up any other place then where you are now. Because if you did GO BACK, you don't get to maintain who and what you have become. I made some ridiculous choices when I was young. I would say stupid but that implies a level of intellect that apparently was completely vacant from me to the point that it can only be conceived as utterly ridiculous. If I went back (please never force me to do that disaster call teen years over again), who is to say if I gave up all the knowledge I have gleaned that I would make any different decision, and if I did maintain all I have learned, I would never end up here. To change one single event would change it all. I don't want to give up the amazing things I have (my children, my husband, my friends). The same thing goes for the world around us.
Imagine for a moment, it's that "leave it to beaver" era. Mom the happy homemaker, is home wearing her pearls carrying a feather duster and making thanksgiving level dinners every night; dad in a suit and tie with his briefcase coming home at exactly 5:15 every night and announcing his return to the fanfare of his family, bowling on the weekends and smoking cigars in the parlor; and their 2.5 children who are perfect except when they are naughty in the cutest life lesson sort of way. The house is ideal, the lawn is perfect, the roses are always in bloom, the neighbors are so witty, and the dog never poops. Okay, how's that hallucination treating you? You all remember that was television right? The reality is, THAT NEVER EXISTED. I know we all have moments when we think of the "when life was easier" era. When it was possible to live on one income and still own a home. Sadly, that wasn't the case for everyone. Sure some people did have that and I am sure it was great. There are SOME people who have that now, just not everybody. And the world wasn't as rosy as those lenses tell you it was. Divorce was frowned on, so too bad if you were in an unhappy marriage. Women weren't welcome in any industry other than nursing or education, heaven forbid if you didn't WANT to be a housewife. Oh and if your skin tone was anything other than good old Anglo-Saxon Caucasian, good luck with affording that ideal house or living in the leave it to beaver neighborhood, it just "wasn't done". So please save me from the "good old days", mentality. For a lot of people they weren't good, or days; they were years of unhappiness. People want to go back to that era because they are drinking the koo-laid, that era wasn't that perfect. The ugly was just swept under the rug. You didn't talk about Billy's mommy who was a drunk. You didn't talk about how Sally's daddy beat her mom. You didn't discuss THOSE people that live in THAT house and how they should move to live with their OWN KIND. You didn't think anything was wrong with the fact that Teddy was smacked on the hand every time he tried to write with his left by his teachers. You didn't discuss that Peg's husband was unfaithful. You didn't discuss that Esther was born on the wrong side of the tracks and her mommy had to work because that just wasn't done. But everybody knew it.
This mentality that the world used to be cupcakes and roses is bullshit. Yes, it would be nice if we could exist in a world of single paycheck households, of affordable homes, of healthy families and good schools for everybody. But to continue to lie to ourselves that it used to be perfect and if everybody went back to praying to a Christian God in school, and everybody raised perfect children, and mommy stayed home to tend to the children, that the world would somehow have all it's issues resolved, is just insanity. To take everything we have learned and go back and REDO things? Really what would you change? Would you insist that women stayed home? Would you insist that everybody pray in school, even if they don't believe in your god? Would you insist that we re-segregate schools? Would you insist that we not go to the moon? That we shouldn't go to war? Which war? Maybe women shouldn't vote? How far back should we take this little reset machine.
Let's stop lying to ourselves and be honest. What you are genuinely wishing for is innocence. You want to go back to being a child and seeing the world without as many flaws. You want to go back to a time when you didn't have to make the hard decisions, when you didn't have to pay the bills, that was all somebody else's concern. I want to skip through the woods and sing at the top of my lungs off key and see everything as unique and new.
It's a beautiful dream, but it's not how this works. We move forward, we gain knowledge and we inherit responsibility. There is no going back, but there is going forward. We aren't going to reset this ride called life but we can renew it.
Renewal is when you work really hard to improve on mistakes and change approaches with the knowledge of where we are now. When you accept the real responsibilities and roles we all have to play. We gained this knowledge from our history, and I mean the real history, the REALITY, not the image we have in our memories clouded by innocence. We have to accept that there are more than one religion and each is valid to it's followers. We have to accept that families are made up of more varieties then mom, dad, and 2.5 kids because that's a small portion of what the reality is, and each type of family is valid. People need to be responsible for their choices, everything is not always somebody else's fault. If you pour your hot coffee in your lap, you made a mistake and probably burned yourself and that' horrible but nobody else did that to you. It's called accountability. And we have to accept that equality means everyone, this isn't teams in dodgeball. Equality means that every single person, from the saint to the sinner, of all religions, from the poor to the rich, from the conservative to the liberal, in every shade under the rainbow is a valid member of society if they choose to participate. We have to respect our past by respecting each other. We have to learn from our mistakes and our history to make better choices going forward. I don't want to go back to how things were...because that implies that all the decisions we have made since then were wrong or not valid. I don't want to remove where we have gotten too in a vain hope that we would "do it better next time".
I know it's long winded but ultimately you can't go back, you can't stay still, the only option is forward.
