the ‘good old days’ never were. there are always issues and problems. every generation has had them, all the way as far as recorded human history and assuredly even when Og and Ugh were sitting in the caves.
humanity tends to romanticize and be nostalgic for the past, and it seems here that creates a lot more suffering than it assuages. is it really helpful to say the best things of life have passed us by?
it is a certainty that in ‘the good old days’ there were those who felt the world was hopeless and the best of all possible times they had ‘missed out on’… but in truth, there is no past, just as there is no future. the only moment you actually have is this one. now. here. and it too, is gone in a blink, and you’re in the next… then the next… then the next.
if you think about that, it is wonderful, beautiful, and extremely liberating. it’s like knowing that every moment is a clean slate. the only reason it would ever be otherwise is that you choose to remember, hold to, pine for, look back at things that have passed and cannot be changed.
sure there are things in this moment that we all wish were differenct. but when did wishing ever create that change? do any of us truly think it will ever do so?
think of the immense power and delight that rests in this moment… how it holds all infinity because in it, you can choose differently… do differently.. be different.
there isn’t a one of us who can make that happen for another. there isn’t a one of us who can in any moment, change the world. but in every moment, we have the potential to begin with ourselves a change that holds that result. and the more of us who embrace that, acknowledge it, do more than speak of it, the closer to a better world we all get.
people who change the world do not speak of how it should change, instead, they live as if the world they would see exists.
or, as ghandi put it, ‘be the change you want to see in the world.’
you can start in any moment. why not now?