Instead, we tend to reflect on the “good old times,” an invocation to a bygone, imprecise time when things were presumably easier. And yet, when we look at the rhetoric surrounding us, few people find hope in how far humanity has come. This comparison seems like an easy exercise. As I write this, I’m sitting in my ergonomic chair with my double monitor and Spotify “Music for Writing” playlist humming in the background, so it is no wonder I’d prefer my comfortable reality to that of someone living in 10,000 BC. Of course, I’m comparing this to the only reality I know. Talk about tough luck.Īnd what if I was born in the Stone Age-forced to migrate from temporary home to temporary home in a frigid ice-age environment? Sounds horrid. In 1941, the Second World War breaks out. So I bid my father goodbye, as he is recruited for the draft. My undeveloped brain cannot wrap my head around why America would be threatened by countries so far away, but I acknowledge that perhaps President Roosevelt knows something I don’t. Just as things start to pick up, they head downward.Īt the age of ten, war is on the horizon. As a Brown person, life is even more difficult, with the continuous threat of racial violence and deportation. Sustainability is an integral part of the culture, but by way of necessity and frugality rather than stewardship. I would be born into the Great Depression, perhaps in a shantytown alongside other destitute families. Whenever I find myself lamenting the abysmal state of our world, I try to picture what my life would look like if I was born eighty-eight years earlier, in 1930. “It’s a tough time to be alive,” said someone, probably, on Twitter fifteen minutes ago and someone in March of 2020, just as COVID-19 was breaking out worldwide not to mention someone living through the Black Plague, recording their thoughts on stretched goat skin.
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