This is the latest in a series of what I call my Cranky, Rambling Rants. Cranky, Rambling Rant #1 was here, Cranky, Rambling Rant #2 was here and Cranky, Rambling Rant #3 was here.
#4 is about how weary I am of arguments which may be about almost anything but they're really about someone who is angry that the world is not like it was when he was 24 years old…or whatever age he now believes was a happier time for him than Right Now.
Generally, these are not someone longing for a time when his or her health was better or they were in a better relationship, though either of those can be an underlying factor in the underlying factor. I recently have had to "mute" a couple of people in my lives who cannot seem to talk about anything other than how everything was better Way Back When. If you mention to them you had a good hamburger somewhere, you have to listen to how hamburgers were better back in the seventies.
No, they weren't. Maybe there was a restaurant back in 1974 that made better burgers than the place you went to last Tuesday…but all hamburgers then weren't wonderful and all hamburgers today don't stink. When you say that to me, what I hear is "My life was better then than it is now" — and that may be so. You can certainly make it so if you're set on viewing everything new as another damned reminder that time passes.
And hey, I'm not saying some things weren't better way back. My knees certainly were. But complaints like that rarely reverse the calendar. I know one guy who seems to feel that if he bitches enough about how lousy The Tonight Show is under Jimmy Fallon, we'll get Johnny Carson back. I don't disagree that Johnny was better than Jimmy but, first of all, not that much better and secondly, that was then and this is now. A lot of entertainment is of its time. I think this fellow was just plain happier with his life back then. In fact, I know he was.
I was happy with a lot of things when I was younger but I've accepted that almost none of them are coming back, at least in the same form. You need to find them in their new form or, more often, appreciate totally new things around you. In my experience, this bitching and moaning about how everything has changed for the worse is always a self-destructive act. If you want to destroy yourself, that's your right but don't try to make me an accomplice.
This has been a Cranky, Rambling Rant against Cranky, Rambling Rants. You know, they were better when I was a kid.