How good were the good old days

Were the good old days, so good?

One of the features of getting older is to have nostalgia about our past and to compare it favorably with the present. How many times have we heard about ‘the good old days’. But, were those days really good?

It is said that legends get a bigger than life image years after they were dead and gone. One hears about the heroics of W G Grace, Don Bradman, Mahatma Gandhi, George Washington, Jesse Owens, Mozart, Beethoven, Churchill, Bernard Shaw ………though we never know if any one of the stories were true or false. In India, more so, as we are uncomfortable questioning the past and doing a honest judgment of a historical figure. We dare not, then, question any of Gandhiji’s debatable opinions. We are happy idolizing the people.

Similar is the story of our past. We tend to look at only the positive side of things, forgetting the pain and difficulties we had to endure then.

Buses were rickety, trains had wooden seats and steam engine (though there was a sense of love and affection towards the mighty steam engine), there was no STD facility (one had to wait for eons after booking a trunk call to speak to someone even living 10 kms away), no internet, no mobiles, no LPG, no computers, no information explosion, no breaking news, no modern comfort equipments, less opportunities to study and work…………… the list is endless.

Today’s world is much better than what it was a couple of decades ago. Today’s children are smarter than we ever were at their age, today’s youngsters are more ambitious and career minded than when we were 24, people have more options, are more risk taking, more dynamic, more qualified. In quest of all these, they may have lost some of the soft skills. But that is the price one has to pay.

The good old days are here, right now. Make the best use of it.