I am once again convinced I should have been born in 1930.* This afternoon, after Grandma and I finished a couple chapters of the book we're reading right now, we spent just as much time talking and catching up, like usual. The state of the weather (chilly and dreary), as well as the time of year, reminded her how she used to go up to Mountain Lake each June when school let out. She and one of her friends would rent a cottage for the weekend, and they'd chaperone a group of older teenage girls, they themselves being only 20. The year would have been about 1947, if I'm doing my math correctly (which I am =).
Usually it would end up being rather cold, but they'd huddle under blankets and tell ghost stories, cook up warm suppers. The cottage was right on the lake, and across the road from the Inn. Every evening, they'd watch couples arrive and dance under the strings of party lights. Music from the jukebox would wave its way across the lake.
It's not the first time she's told me about her childhood and young adult years, of the late-night ice skating on the neighbor's pond with tons of friends, of the dances every Friday, the hayrides, the campfires, the hymn-sings, the sundresses and homemade ice cream on hot afternoons, the newsreels before a movie you paid a quarter to get into. It's also not the first time I've wished I could have grown up then, experienced a life I only get glimpses of occasionally.
People say we always cast a rosy, sunshiney shadow over the past, and I'm sure that is true to a certain extent. However, I think the 30s, 40s, 50s, and part of the 60s really were rosier for Americans. True, we were involved in lots of wars (but when are we ever not). There was the Great Depression (pretty much have grown up in one in my own house so that's nothing new either). And of course racial discrimination, which can't be justified.
But overall, the way people lived—the way they chose to look at life, perhaps even the way they thought—was different. A better different. Because people had different values.
Often, people blame the change on cellphones, faster cars, bigger planes, the internet and Facebook. But those are just a material expression of the internal change that has taken place, the change of values, the change of what is important to people.
Mostly, I think relationships aren't as important to us here in the 21st century, even though social media sights are all the rage. The focus is at least more on length (# of friends), less on depth (quality of friendships you do have).
When you value people, value friendships, it changes the way you work and the way you play; also, how much time you spend doing either, and what you do with that time. Many of us spend our time very differently than my Grandma and her friends and family did, than the "many" of her day did. And that (in my opinion) is why our culture changed. Friendship doesn't matter as much.
And it's sad.
Because I like Friday night dances!
O, and because America would be a happier, safer place, and friendship is über biblical and necessary.
*Just pretend with me for a few minutes and let's forget the doctrinal inconsistencies of that statement.
2 comments:
I find myself feeling the same way more and more. People shared the same values and were more united. They watched the same t.v. shows and didn't always have to be on the look out for the "liberal" or "concservative" slant. I think one of the biggest things was the mainstream agreement on what was right and wrong (objective truth)regarding morality. People are making up their own rules now and if we don't follow them we are considered narrow minded biggots. Relativism is divisive.
Agreed. Thanks for your two cents.
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