Apr 27, 2024 4 min read

We’ve been told many times and in many ways that to err is human.

Perhaps just as human is the impulse toward nostalgia.

Once you reach adulthood, or are deep in middle age or on the cusp of your “golden years,” it’s entirely understandable to look back on your younger days with a rosy glow. When you were young you felt invincible, your life stretched before you and seemed rich with possibility. You had many fewer responsibilities and you could stay out until 4 a.m. on weekends and rebound without missing a beat. Now, on a Saturday night, you’re glad to be tucked in bed by 10 p.m.

But there is a tendency among some people to apply the rosy glow of their own youth to the America of their youth. This came to mind this week when we saw a meme on social media that showed a man decked in weathered overalls and a beaten up hat, looking into a sunset with his arm around a young boy, perhaps his son or grandson. Then, it has the legend, “I can’t say it loud enough! I miss the America that I grew up in.”

The natural follow-up question would be, “When did you grow up in America?”

The second question would be, “What do you miss about it? And be specific.”

It’s by no means unusual to believe the past is better than the present. All of the controversies and problems of yesteryear are now part of history. But if any adults today have the opportunity to step into a time machine and return to the “America they grew up in,” they might want to think twice.

Let’s say you were young in the 1950s. The postwar economy was expanding, manufacturing was robust, and television programs like “Gunsmoke” and “Father Knows Best” offered images of sturdy manhood and suburban tranquility. But open any newspaper from those days to the obituary pages, and people were dying younger, Black Americans were subject to discrimination in just about every corner of the country, and gay and lesbian Americans were forced deep in the closet.

And if you were a woman? Don’t think about doing something as simple as applying for a credit card. Women weren’t allowed to get credit cards without a husband co-signing until 1974.

The specter of nuclear annihilation hung over the 1950s and early 1960s, and the 1960s was perhaps the most turbulent decade the nation had seen since the Civil War, with urban riots, assassinations and a war raging in Vietnam.

You grew up in the 1970s? The decade may have brought some great music and movies, but would anyone want to endure Watergate again? Or relive the stagflation that brought skyrocketing prices, stagnant economic growth and high unemployment? And would you really want to trade Spotify for 8-track tapes? Put on polyester and platform shoes? Or trade any vehicle manufactured today for the rust buckets that Detroit was foisting on the public 50 years ago?

We also occasionally see people who are middle-aged or older expressing a belief that Americans worked harder when they were young, and now they are lazy malcontents, or intent on collecting benefits. It’s a truly puzzling contention, since Americans work longer hours than their counterparts in developed nations, and have fewer holidays, less vacation time and have a less robust safety net to rely on when times are tough. It’s simply untrue that Americans aren’t putting in sufficient time at their jobs.

The past may seem like a comfortable place, but we shouldn’t expend energy trying to return to it. Instead, we should try to make the world of the here and now better.