The good ol’ days are not so much historical, as they are emotional. They become what advocates feel they were. Each story of ol’ days is a bit different than the next story. Solomon, living nearly three thousand years ago, was faced with a repetitive statement of every generation that the earlier period was better than the current one. His question was really, Can you prove the statement? He baited the reader: What caused them to be better than the present? Our days, better or worse, need to be accounted for to history. Why are they better; or, why are they worse? Solomon asserted that such a question may not generate from wisdom. That is a nice way of saying that it can be a dumb question. It is interesting that, in the centuries of the kingdom after the death of Solomon, both David’s and Solomon’s reigns were perceived as the halcyon years for Israel and the kingdom. But at this historical height, Solomon wrote without sure perceptions of history, past or present. If ol’ days were better or worse, what is the explanation? Glib remarks about good or bad are troublesome. They are often too simple responses, or irrelevant.
The Greeks and Romans, prolific in raising questions (issues) made similar plaints. This applied especially in wondering what was happening in the lives and attitudes of youthful generations. Why are youths rebelling? When you were young, did the elders honor their ol’ days? Likely they did. So there must be something missed in the transitions of cultures, if each yearns for his/her ol’ days, days that were deplored by parents and pundits during those ol’ days. The present trying days of the younger generation will be the good ol’ days of that generation, especially emerging in memory when they begin to critique the shallow generation of their children of current days. Our confusion is largely due to uncertainty for finding measurements.
I have read extensively about the Great Depression of the 1930s. I deny little that I have read. Still, the real story is flawed. I grew up in those days. My mother took in roomers and boarders, my stepfather worked at the Quaker Oats Co. for 53 cents an hour. If all the money I was given in allowance was in nickels, I could hold the entire amount afforded in a decade in one hand. We had little, and we expected little. I did pledge myself to always have enough to buy a fried egg sandwich and a glass of milk. I worked for it – peddling papers, caddying for the money folks, hawking fruit down the streets from a huckster wagon. The kids divided between the energetic aggressive ones who adjusted to circumstances, and those that succumbed. Later I felt that the primary difference was in the way parents related to their children. We had much laughter in our home. We refused to let things get us down. We were motivated to look for legitimate ways to gain what was necessary.
During the economic downturn of the first years of the 21st Century, I went back over my years, the ol’ days. Days should be perceived as similar, when one is taught to use what God has given in challenge that these are as good as any days if we, under God, make them so. If only news media caught that. If only parents and friends communicated that. Our days are our own. We can make them good. These are the only days we have. We ought to make the most of them, these ol’ days. (Psalm 118:24) Who decided that good days must be decided only by economics, or other standards? I can, under God, be morally upright and God sees me through for the responsibility. I should pray for the world, and find some comfort and rest in that privileged duty. I should set a model, partly by remembering what a society did to the most magnificent winner of days who ever lived – 2000 years ago, and for now. We can be sure that God did not mean for us to measure our days by natural events only. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020