Was it Better Back Then?
As I get older the expression when I was younger creeps slowly into my vocabulary. Everything seems to be better when I was younger (at least that is what my children have accused me of saying). A typical set of expressions that I use a fair amount are:
- When I was younger, I could eat anything and never gain weight.
- When I was younger, I seemed to have more disposable income.
- When I was younger, Canada Savings Bonds earned over 10% interest.
- When I was younger, music wasn’t so weird.
You can add many more to this, and this obsession with nostalgia that I have seems to be an off shoot of my own maturing.
If I look. the statements I have made may actually be true (the music one is debatable, since I did listen to Teenage Head and Jayne County and the Electric Chairs), but the reason for them being true are points that I don’t like to think about.
I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted, because I rode my bike everywhere, and had regular exercise every single day, nothing magical about this, it’s quite simple really. My metabolism has dropped a little, but the fact that I could eat a Large Miss Jean Talon pizza by myself and remain at 165 lbs., was not magical, it was because I exercised, pure and simple.
The same is very true for my money situation. When I was younger I could buy whatever I liked, but what I wanted was a much smaller subset of the things I want now, and I had free room and board. If I went back in time to tell myself how much money I would have now, I would be floored. I may have had more disposable income, but I can do much more about my disposable income now, than I could back then.
It’s easy to lose perspective on our younger days, and keep thinking how much better things seemed back then, but in my case, now is just fine.
Do You Want to Go Back?
Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen boasts of how better things were when someone was younger, but really, in my life at least, I am living in my Glory Days right now, no matter what you may read here to the contrary. To quote one of my favorite movie lines from Randall Pink Floyd “All I’m saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life – remind me to kill myself.” (I mean this in reference to my younger days, of course).
I have enough disposable income, I have more treasures in my life than I deserve (and I don’t mean monetary) and I have enough health to appreciate all of this. All I would like to do is go back in time, and tell my younger self to save a little more, and that things will keep getting better.
When are your Glory Days?
@bigcajunman
Good advice, if only they would understand that it’s so true!
@Credit Cards Canada
I actualy feel less stress now than when I was in High School and University. I hated the feeling of always having a project due, or homework to catch up on. Now I can relax in the evenings without worrying about what I need to do tomorrow. Maybe that’s the joys of working in the public sector 🙂
Childhood and teenage years are the best years of most adults life assuming you lived in a financially stable family.
Weight gain is a combination of metabolism and activity level. In our younger years, both of the factors are high so no matter what we ate it got burnt.
But the most important aspect of being a kid/teenager was the less amount of stress we had. No responsibilities no nothing.
I like that Dazed and Confused quote too!
I tell my kids that whenever they start getting too wound up in their High School lives, THIS is not the best years of your lives!
Maybe, but at least you are exercising too!