BACK IN THE DAY
Friday, October 30, 2020
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how hard life is now?
Think back – say, 150,000 years, when our early cousins were starting life as we know it in the great rift valley of Africa. Life expectancy was low – our ancestors had to get busy reproducing early in life because life didn’t last very long. There were no time clocks to punch, no phones to make a 911 call, hunters and gatherers, their diet was raw and fresh. Their climate was pleasant, but there was no mall to shop in, no FedEx deliveries of anything. Eat, sleep, avoid lions, eat, sleep, and avoid lions. It was a simple life, and you have to wonder what they did at night without streaming Netflix, without lights or lamps. They couldn’t even sit around a campfire because fire hadn’t been discovered yet.
Have you ever wondered how life would have been centuries ago, or when our grandparents were our age?
Life was pleasant for them – it was what they knew and were used to; they did not have wild expectations of the kind of life we enjoy today or the health/longevity we want.
We have so many blessings, I’ve lost count.
Think back forty years – all cars guzzled gas, cell phones were single-function bricks, fax machines were the rare new thing that used thermal paper on a roll, the Rubik’s cube was new. So was CNN. Post-it notes were invented, and Pac-Man was new too. Inflation was in double digits, interest rates were unbelievably high … and we found out who shot JR. And who shot John Lennon.
Here we are in 2020.
I think the view forward is far better than the view looking backward.
Life is always getting better, and it has hardships and curves, but life always has been a risky thing – but we move forward. None of us will be here in a hundred years, and most of us would guess badly if we tried to predict earthbound life that far in the future.
If we could travel any distance in time, would any of us go back in time?
If such a possibility ever existed, I believe we’d all be scrambling forward to see what was over the horizon – to see the next century, next decade, next month, or maybe just as far as next Wednesday …