Then and Now 5/16/2021

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

My frequent readers will be accustomed to certain pervasive themes in my writing. I hope that you don’t find these repetitive motifs too off putting but I can’t really seem to help it.  I guess asking me to stray from some of my more prevalent ideas would be akin to asking Stephen King to adjust his work to toddlers.  Now, with his level of talent I am sure he COULD do it, but whether asking him to do so is a good idea is another matter entirely. This is how it would be if I strayed too far from the topics that are nearest and dearest to me. Perhaps this makes me one (or few) dimensional, or somewhere in the small-minded category when it comes to my writing but, I’ve always understood it to be best to write about what you know, what you love and what means most to you.  I could be erring in this assessment but thus far it’s proven to be a fairly decent route to follow.  One of these ever-appearing subjects in my writing is the past.  I am forever returning to old stories, historic locales and just generally draping my writings in the past like a warm nostalgic quilt.  Lately as the thoughts of yesteryear have filled my mind as they so readily do, I’ve started to wonder about why exactly my mind works this way.  I am certainly not opposed to modernity and all its many conveniences but why is it that I am so irreversibly drawn to antiquity?  What is this hold that days past have upon me and why does it so often show itself?

I do feel that I must preface anything I say by attempting to make it very clear that I am not one to think that days of old always live up to the famously used characterization, “the good old days”.  While I am certain times gone by most assuredly have many an insight we could learn and benefits we could garner, I am not nostalgic enough to think that they were inherently better than the present.  I daresay when most anyone is faced with the option of walking across a hall into a heated or cooled bathroom with an actual toilet versus a long walk in the sordid elements and all the inhabitants thereof to seat yourself on unforgiving wood over a pit of horror when nature beckoned them in the middle of the night, that most, if not all minus the occasional masochist, would choose the former.  This may be a more primitive example but, in this case, the old days were not in fact so good comparatively.  So I feel very safe in stating that I do not give yesterday inherent superiority to today.  When faced with a trek to a creek, bucket in tow or turning a faucet handle with glass in hand I choose the present’s option every time.

We travel today in cars that are moving from gasoline combustion to the still somewhat strange but becoming all the more common type of vehicle that you actually plug in.  Supposedly it is the direction the entire automotive industry hopes to travel.  Such advances are all well and good, but I do tend to wonder the opinion of the mules who tell stories amongst themselves of their grandparents and great grandparents pulling families to town in wagons or walking in front of plows in fields.  Do the mules of yore miss those days?  Do they long for the usefulness of their bygone duties?  Do people even have mules anymore?  I know I see on most days but I live in an exceptionally rural area so my experience is possibly the exception to the rule.  I suppose when it comes down to it a car and tractor are more efficient approaches to their respective tasks, but no one has asked the mule or horse their opinion on being relieved of their former charge so the impact upon them remains unknown.

Today the magic of technology and the internet allows the world to become an infinitely smaller place.  It is with the touch of a button we can casually converse with someone very literally anywhere in the world.  We have, for better or worse, hopefully mostly better, become a planetary society where the span of miles or even continents is of little consequence in forming connections. The world has become quite small. In the past when travel was a more monumental task and large distances meant unknowable lands, the world then was small too, but differently.  Then the bonds were close in both relationship and geography because that was the only really viable option available. The kinship was built face to face and not over invisible networks of flying ones and zeros.  There were many small, tightly knit worlds instead of one giant but small world.  In this case while I think the ability to commune with anyone anywhere is an invaluable resource there is something to be said for the small tightly knit cloth.  The loose open weave can succinctly spread across the breadth, but is it in fact as sturdy and unyielding as the small close threads?

I suppose all I have done in this blog is ramble on about the pros and cons of the past and the present.  We now entertain ourselves with hobbies that used to be how we fed our families such as carpentry and metalwork.  Such skills used to be absolutely necessary and now they are whimsical do it yourself pastimes.  Part of me thinks we have lost the innate knowledge of the harvest. Not so much the literal concept of farming (though that as well to an extent) but the idea that to reap resources, products and truly everything one needs, there must be a sowing.  I feel like we’ve somewhat lost the blessed knowledge of labor and toil to meet needs all to the luxurious ease of convenience.  Also, while the world has become one big society letting us learn of people all over this globe, maybe we need to be sure that we don’t lose sight of the neighbor next door who needs our benevolence just as much. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to the past.  Something in me wants to be a bridge.  I want to span the gap between yesterday and today.  I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I want to take all the diligence and respect of the past and merge it with the ingenuity and brainstorm of modernity.  I love how the stories of the past can give us all the lessons and instruction that we can apply to the innovation and advancement of now.  I hope that my desire to cling to the past and willingness to embrace the present and even what is to come leaves me balanced with the best of all worlds.  If I hope to be a bridge, it’s rather important that the foundations on both ends are steady and established.  In looking at things that way, it would seem the past and the future are each equally as significant to make me, and all of us, who we are.