DO YOU FIND LIFE GETTING TOUGHER, WISHING FOR GENTLER TIMES

9/17/2009

Hello Everyone...

Do you find as you're getting older that life is
getting tougher ? Or do you wish for a gentler time when
everything was different ? Many times I sit back and think
today with music you don't understand or know what their
singing ...Television is a bore, no one has talent for writing
comedy or drama. People in public are rude, children have no
manners , where is our society headed ?..... What
is your thoughts ? I grew up in the 1950's and early 1960's a
time for a child to be innocent and yet still a child not like today.


Cheers..Joe...

I like having the wisdom of being older, but not the physical limitations, which far younger people have also. I like the technology of life today, (like this messageboard), googling any topic that comes to mind, keeping in touch with friends and family. I love cell phones and microwaves. I think there is talent out there in music and writing, but what I'd like to see isn't what much of the population seems to want.

I like automatic washing machines and not having to iron everything.

There are lots of things I like about life today. I miss those from my life in the past that are no longer here.

Carol

Joe,


Watch the old shows, listen to the old music.

People are rude, but you are not.


Bless you,

Alice

9/17/2009

Hi....

Alice thank you...Yes it was a gentler time, Mother's
had time for their children, we read books, watched great clean
comedy on TV, saw films that were decent. The advantage of
today is we have computers, cell phones, movies on disk, we can
get our books published easier because of the web all in all if we
could only combine the two eras together that would be great !

Cheers...Joe...

I think a lot of nostalgia for the past is wishful thinking for the way it never was.

It was if you lived it.

Seems to me life is a lot easier today. As far as being gentle back then, there was World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The 1950s saw adults spitting on kids as part of the violence of the civil rights movement. The 1960's were the heyday of the hippies, "go home and kill your parents" and then the hangover from that at Kent State in May, 1970. I agree that writing has deteriorated and the TV dramas and comedies of the 1970s and '80s were better than today, but most of it in the 1950s bore no resemblance to reality and doesn't stand up now. I agree most movies were better back then.
I agree, too, that the country has becme ridiculously polarized today. As individuals I can't see that people are any worse today. In groups, intolerance for the views of others has increased to an unhealthy level.

For some people, it was great.

I liked the way it was in a lot of ways.

Children did act better, but in some cases parents and teachers were mean.

I don't think the heavy-handed ways were the best. I think
people are too lax now about manners , bedtimes, etc.,

It would be nice to hit a happy medium.

I saw Dick's intolerance issue and I concur.

It would be nice if we could somehow merge the best of the past and the present.

Dick Stodghill wrote:

. I agree that writing has deteriorated and the TV dramas and comedies of the 1970s and '80s were better than today, but most of it in the 1950s bore no resemblance to reality and doesn't stand up now. I agree most movies were better back then.
I agree, too, that the country has becme ridiculously polarized today. As individuals I can't see that people are any worse today. In groups, intolerance for the views of others has increased to an unhealthy level.

TV -I never got I Love Lucy. Totally insipid show. She'd "disguise" herself with a fake mustache and Ricky would be fooled. And that famous skit when she and Ethyl were on some candy assembly line and when the candies moved too fast, she stuffed her dumb face with them instead of hitting the "off" button. Mary Tyler Moore, Leave It To Beaver... nope, never "got" those, either. Although Eddie Haskell could be funny.


Re tolerance, who is less tolerant? The endlessly warring tribes all over the world or we, who have laws about speech?

Correction: When I said MTM, I was actually thinking of the Dick Van Dyke show, where MTM was a co-star. The MTM show wasn't too bad, but the DVD show was just stupid.

I loved, I Love Lucy and still watch it and still like it.

I had no TV in the 1950's so I had a lot of catching up to do.

Most anything on TV is better than doing dishes and eating peas.

I also like Dick Van Dyke.

What are our laws about speech?

It’s difficult and unfair to compare living today compared to yesterday. Everyone’s yesterday is different depending on one’s age. And, is it compared as a child or an adult?

Most older folks here have talked about the tough times of their youth, however as kids, we didn’t know they were tough since it was the norm. We had fun, but the fun we had is not the fun kids have today. We didn’t have all the material things. We worked in the fields – today that would be against child labor laws.
As adults, we tried to make things easier for our kids. (The debate of whether that was right or wrong continues.) We didn’t want our kids to endure the tough times, once we realized that they were tough.
Times have changed. Our outlook on life has changed. That doesn’t mean
we can’t look back and remember the good things - the simple unhurried way of life.

I grew up in the city. It was a hurried and complicated life. Now I live in a small town and the woods where life is simple and unhurried. I wouldn't go back to the city, but some people love the city.

I didn't watch much TV when younger. You forgot "Little House on the Prairie" which was a favorite in our house when my younger girls were growing up. Bob Newhart, and Mash were favorites then also.

Carol

When I take time to look backwards, I see how much the world has changed; I also see how I have changed. I am not the child, the young woman, the wife of Bill, the stay-at-home mom or the single mother, not even the teacher. I have evolved through those times and those roles, and each stage of that evolutionary journey had its own trials and treasures. There are very few incidentals along the paths that I would change. Sometimes the choices I made led in challenging directions, but I still agree with something I read about ten or so years ago, a passage from Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self, by Sarah Ban Breathnach:

"But [even] a wrong choice is not necessarily a bad choice.

You married the wrong man. Became a teacher instead of a country and western singer. You didn't finish college, join the Peace Corps, or move to New York. If you had, your life would have been different. But not necessarily better. That's because we, not our outer circumstances, are the catalysts for the quality of our lives. Not then. Not now. Not ever."

I think that's been true of the times as well. There were good and bad characteristics in every decade. I'm glad I've lived through them all, and am looking forward to dealing with whatever changes are on their way. The one thing I feel for certain is that there are some doozies coming soon.

Ann

My husband and I have a big anniversary coming up in December. We joke that we've had ten good years, and ten out of fifty isn't bad. We had a few more good years than ten, but there were also some not so good times, not that anyone went off the deep end (well, not too far anyway), but life circumstances and growing pains just brought on challenges. I read somewhere that marriage can be like lilac bushes that are beautiful in the spring and then look dead in the winter only to bloom again. We've both taken life paths of our own and woven our lives together. When I speak with pilot wives, we talk about how only those who were independent and had lives of their own made it in long-term marriages, which is the opposite of what one would expect. But there is only so much waiting a wife can do, and life goes on.

I agree with Ann when I look at all the roles I tried to play: military wife, pilot wife, and mother, only to reach the place where I played no role except being who I was, where I threw out the shoulds and took each day as it came. While trying to control, I learned to go with the flow of life.

I love gentle times, but also adventure. The toughest time of my life was when my children were young.

The greatest times are being a grandma.

Carol

The best part of my life was when the kids were under 10.

I liked it when everyone was home or we were on a family vacation together.

Camping was great too.

Alice wrote:

What are our laws about speech?

Hate speech. Racial, ethnic, religious, gender jokes (they'll get you fired). People must be very careful about what they say. Which is as it should be, but I don't think it's the norm in most other countries.