Empathy & Simpler Times?

It was a thing, wasn't it?

I know I wax nostalgic in my posts a lot, but I’ve really been feeling it over the last week or so, that incredible longing for the world that used to be.

The show “Up All Night” is currently in rotation on Peacock. It was so funny the first time I saw it, thirteen-ish years ago, and I knew it wouldn’t miss the second time around. Christina Applegate, Maya Rudolph and Will Arnett are some of my favorites and they did not disappoint in the hilarity department. I was not, however, prepared for the sentimental feelings it would bring up.

It ran for two seasons from 2011-2012. That was a good time, a much simpler time. At least I think it was. I’ve really been longing for simpler times lately. The simplicity of the 80’s and 90’s when our phones were plugged into the wall and you had to call the smartest person you knew, go to the library or consult a dusty set of encyclopedias when you wanted to know something. When long distance calls could only be had after 9PM lest they break the budget. When Taco Bell tasted like food, and going out for a fancy meal meant dressing up for Sizzler. We only had so many channels and TV shows ran the length of the school year. Going to the movies and renting from Blockbuster was a special treat.

And I know technology had changed significantly in the early aughts, but simplicity was still there as well. Our cell phones and cars weren’t smart yet. We had computers, but they couldn’t do as much so most people didn’t spend as much time on them. Facebook had only just started and was actually fun. Just catching up with family and finding old friends (remember the joy you felt when you came across an old high school friend that you lost of track?). Seeing pictures of people’s weddings and new babies and kids’ birthdays and sharing cute pic of cats with motivational quotes. And paper Christmas cards were still a thing back then. I really miss those.

Life just seemed lighter and brighter then. More hopeful. All the technological advances seemed to be lending to positive progress in so many places: medicine, the environment and just making life easier for people struggling the world over. And on a personal level, I wasn’t sick. I was mentally stable. I could still eat gluten without expelling all of my insides (I miss the ease of eating gluten soooo, fucking much). I went back to school and finished my degree. We had a house. A falling apart house, but still, a house. I had both of my kids at home and they lived a simpler, easier life that, at this rate, any children they may have will never know. My partner and I were still very much a married couple. I was thoroughly enjoying being a wife and a mom. We had regular date nights and frequent get togethers with friends and family. Parties and holidays were so easy and fun. We camped in beautiful places that now in only ten years’ time have been ravaged by sea rise and floods and mudslides and fires. And everything was so, much, fucking, cheaper! I look back and think, fuck we were living like royalty back then on a paltry income. Life was idyllic in so many ways. But mostly it was just simpler.

Don’t get me wrong, I tremendously appreciate the convenience of having the wealth of the world’s information in my pocket and learning about things that I never would have otherwise been exposed to without the internet. I enjoy connecting with people that I know who are far away and making new friends who are also far away. I enjoy the variety and diversity of shows and movies now, there have been some really great things on the screen over the past ten years. I do however miss the shared experience and commonality of TV and movies in the 80’s and 90’s. Everybody was watching the same things so we always had something to talk about and relate to and catch phrases that everyone knew and understood. Sidebar: There was so much normalized racism, misogyny and homophobia during that time though that really spilled out into TV and film. I watch some of those older things now with my daughter and can’t believe that people thought some of those jokes were okay to say, let alone funny.

I am, however, fully aware that my memories of that time come from a place of privilege as well as ignorance. From elementary school through high school I was taught that slavery ended with the Civil War and that the civil rights movement all but ended racism. I was completely blindsided then in 2007 by friends and family members that I thought were kind, caring, reasonable people who refused to vote for Obama purely because he was black. And then absolutely devastated in 2015 when these same people who I thought had learned the error of their ways purposely voted for misogyny, racism and homophobia under the guise of “the economy”.

I’m absolutely under no delusion that those “simpler times” that I speak of were perfect. There were absolutely so many things wrong with the 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s. But there were also a lot of things that were right. I really miss not feeling like I had to be “on” all the time. My brain feels like it just can’t stop anymore. And I really miss people just being kinder. Or at least I perceived that they were because they weren’t unleashing on each other so publicly all the time. Some behaviors just weren’t acceptable, but now they think they can do whatever they want. Remember when political scandals were still a thing and shitty behavior wasn’t just normalized, but had consequences? I’m under no delusion that politicians weren’t doing sneaky, underhanded things then too, but I think so many more of them really did intend to do the right thing (at least when they first started out), they just had very different ideas about what that thing was.

People keep talking about how we’re a country divided by our political beliefs, but it’s not politics that’s separating us. It’s empathy. The very basic human emotion of caring for other people, your family, your friends, your neighbors and people even further away. That’s what’s missing.

Yes, I want to go back to landlines and humans answering business phones and going to the mall and Blockbuster. And one shopping trip at one grocery store that only has one sports drink (I’m fairly certain that every grocery store is half full of beverages at this point, but that’s a whole other post) and only one flavor of Oreos (seriously wtf is with all the weirdass Oreo flavors? Gingerbread, Cotton Candy, Coca Cola with Popping Candy, ewwww). But what I really want more than anything else right now is a shared empathy and caring for other humans amongst a majority of the population. I’m not completely delusional, am I? Wasn’t that actually there at one point in the not-so-distant past? Why is that so fucking hard to come by now?