Musings on Changes or: “Enough is Enough!”

Someone once observed that the only constant in life is change. So very true! Those who have the ability to adjust to that maxim throughout their life, are able to accept changes and move forward. As a youngster, I couldn’t wait to be a teenager, then I eagerly accepted the role of being an adult. For me, that met taking on a nursing career with huge responsibilities at age 20, living independently, then marrying my beloved, having a family, happily accepting the frequent moves to places where the culture, foods, lifestyles, even the weather were unique experiences, and relishing all of it. Along the way, I learned invaluable lessons about life, death, personal loss and how useless it was to dwell in the past. A very wise friend succinctly wrote in her poetry- “I over stayed among the absent” and so she made the decision to move on. I would say my personal mantra has always been “Affirm Life, Be Joyous, Give Thanks, and Move Forward.”

Each generation sees changes in just about every aspect of living— including fashions, popular musical genres, acceptable words uttered in public, methods of traveling, creation of new industries and hence job opportunities, and the rapid growth of technology that enters our everyday world. For example, I first listened to music from a manual Victrola, then to an electric record player, followed by an automatic one with stackable LP’s, and eventually to a stereo system with multiple ways to control the treble and bass sounds. Cassette tapes were followed by CD’s, then MP3’s and now play lists are heard on Digital Audio Players—don’t even ask what those are—I looked it up and still had no idea of what they were talking about! I also went from a radio for news and entertainment, to watching an eight inch black and white TV set offering three channels (maybe four depending where one lived) that went off the air at midnight, to today’s 24/7 streaming via a host of services. The smart phones and internet provide us with the latest events from any where in the world within seconds of it happening. The constant innovations have brought more alleged leisure time and have always been touted that they would make life easier. Who could possibly argue with that?

Well, me for one! I believe that every positive affect also has a negative affect, be it in the economy, or in education or in how we accept things. It took me a long time to get the hang of streaming— even today, I can get pretty frustrated due to the overwhelming number of choices and the time it takes to actually put it on the screen. (Some stream services simply are problematic at best.) True, I could ask Alexa to help me but I don’t use that tool as I still believe it’s an invasion of my space. I cringe that toddlers and preschoolers are using little mini computers to entertain them as well as “to help them learn” when there are indications that their normal brain circuits are being disrupted. (I’m so quaint, that my default is to watch one of my many movie and documentary DVD’s.)

There is a huge change in communicating with one another. Phone usage went from party lines where an operator placed calls, to private lines using a self dialed rotary phone. Yes, progress to the consumer but thousands of operators lost their jobs. Out of town calls remained expensive, so we hand wrote scores of letters, postcards, and notes. Probably because I never had good penmanship, I loved typewriters. The first typewriter in my childhood home was a large manual Underwood but I acquired my favorite one in the early 60’s. It was a portable, manual Olympia S with a carrying case, that typed in a cursive script. Used it for decades and just loved that machine! Today, many young people cannot read cursive writing as it is no longer taught in elementary schools. Younger generations communicate with friends and family almost exclusively via texting on their phones, using acronyms, abbreviations, and phonic sounds for words. I recently read an article on how a growing number of teens do not even use the telephone element on their phones as they find oral communication “stressful.” (I could not make that up!) How sad!

I was no easy convert to a computer or a smart phone and rarely used either. Today, I am the Queen of placing Amazon Prime orders, doing research, using Pages for my writings, sending and receiving emails, texting, using mobile banking, and having Google at my fingertips. But here’s the rub. In this world of instant global communication, things are evolving way too fast for anyone to fully understand and assimilate it. Are the articles I read, the photos I look at, the voices and people on Utube that I hear and see, real or now generated by AI? Changes have always affected society with innovations that made the old ways obsolete but the changes happening now are just bizarre. Did the isolation of Covid and dependence on phones and internet push people over the edge, to lose their sense of humor? To fill them with such anger and and frustration? To not know what critical thinking means? Society is devolving back into what I call tribal behavior, where people retreat to living with only those who think and believe as they do and are willing to wage acts of aggression on those they disagree with. Corporation greed is rampant, a few mega conglomerations and corporations dominate the business world, and some nameless power determines what all the major network news programs will cover. (Just surf the evening news on those networks, and it will be the same stories, usually with the same times for the commercials.) Cable offers various channels for every political slant you want. “Bots” are filling up social media sites, spammers collect millions of dollars from vulnerable people, and advertisements have run amok. My “favorites” are the pharmaceutical drug ads—yipes, who would willingly take them after hearing the endless list of side effects—ie: suicide ideation—really?— not to mention that apparently the drug companies think physicians are so clueless that you, the customer, has to tell them your medical history and inform them that a particular drug may help you.

The dumbing down of our society alarms me but I can’t change it. I keep saying “I’m done, it’s no longer my world.” Our political parties are broken, “compromise” is a dirty word. I don’t understand the changes in “parenting” today. I don’t understand the postponing of adulthood—seems to me that began when it was decided that one’s offspring could be carried on their parents health insurance until age 26. (Why didn’t Congress just fix our broken healthcare system instead?) I do not understand the huge numbers who follow and imitate the “influencers”on social media. My list is endless!

And yet—I’m like a moth to the flame and keep reading articles that keep me abreast on all these things. Go figure! Perhaps it’s time to tell myself “enough is enough” and retreat back to yesteryear where “memories may vary” and life made a lot more sense.