Back in the Day

Back in the Day

Back in the day life was simple and straight (and not always great) but life had a path that most of us took, which often panned out like a well-known book. Our parents had money to pay for just living not mobiles and tablets and cars and ‘just giving’. We all went to school in one way or other and then got a job just to earn bread and butter. Of course, we had dreams and ambitions and plans but always in mind was one thing at a time. Work. Study. Qualify. Rise. Happy, no gadgets yet still have fun in our eyes. Relationships at school were innocent fun, more serious later and then wedding bells rung. A small home sufficed with make do and mend. No expectations of thousands to spend on furnishings, gadgets and cupboards of crap (full of additives, salt and all sorts of plap). Holidays? No. Or maybe just one in a year or a weekend of sun on the coast (not abroad but here). But then time went by and our incomes improved so we could get a car or eventually move to a house a bit bigger. At some point came children and playing outside, reading a comic or having a bike to ride. And so, on it went. Life wasn’t easy but it was well spent.

What you don’t have you don’t miss they say. So, how can we compare to things nowadays?

Relationships at school now are not always fun. The internet has become a chasm of status and photos and deeds that can’t be undone. Young people are groomed or displayed (and not just for their ‘outfit of the day’). Kids having boyfriends and catching diseases then crying online about ‘that girl who teases me’. There is so much pressure on young kids today, academically, socially in a world of diversity: sort that career, get to university (never mind that who they look up to make millions from perversity). The world in which we live is virtual reality, so bright, interesting where normal equals banality. So, for our children to ‘live’ there are gadgets to buy. There’s no getting around it, if you don’t provide Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat your child will be ostracized. So, the kids all leave school for more education or if they can find it a heartfelt vocation or even a job if they can find one. They have aspirations of buying a house or travelling to India, China or Laos but often that’s dreams, ideas perpetuated by vloggers unseen who have made it seem that that’s what we all should be doing.

And so, we have children with the world at their feet, a world so fantastic but so out of reach that only the few can attain this ‘utopia’ and others who are happy to bet all their hopes on giving the media every last piece of their souls.

Direction, simplicity, make do and mend has become desire, complication and unattainable goals and happiness in the end?

JAM 2017