Random rants and ramblings...

It’s weird that how we think of something now could have been seen in a totally different light at another time. Or all of the things going on while another is going on.

I originally thought this when I took a Pan-African English course. My professor brought up the fact that certain time periods in history are romanticized. While we think of cute love stories going on in the 1940’s like in The Notebook and think of heroic war stories, there were actually other true, horrible wars going on. African Americans did not have civil rights up until the 1960’s. They were horribly beaten, lynched, and mistreated. They couldn’t participate in many things white people could. I cringe just thinking about it. Behind all the cutesy war stories, were men suffering terribly, mentally and physically.

I’m very much a positive person, and hate to focus on the negative things going on in the midst of all the progress. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge different perspectives, to not only think of one.

While you’re just sitting at home watching a movie, someone else is being abused, someone is slipping and falling on their ass (haha), someone is meeting the person they will spend the rest of their life with, someone is doing something! There is so much going on. Nice to take a gander out of your own little world every once in awhile.

I enjoy when I have thoughts like this, then an artist comes along and sums up all of what I was thinking. I mean, I’d rather be the artist getting the credit, but it’s all good. In this case, the new Dave Matthews Band song, “Funny The Way It Is” seemed to relate a lot to these thoughts of mine.

Another random thought I’ve always had: many cars from like 10-20 years ago look so old and outdated now. I wonder what it was like, in the summer of 1985, looking at a lot of brand new cars. Honestly thinking that sports car was the best it was ever gonna get. I just can’t look at a dumpy boxy car and imagine myself, 15 years ago, all excited about how top of the line it was. It’s hard to go back in time and imagine what that might have been like. Maybe it’s a silly example, but oh well.

That’s a small example compared to even trying to think of the world before technology and streets and cities. To those of us in this generation, it’s nearly impossible. We can go camping in the sticks with no cell reception and get an idea, but we can’t fathom a simpler civilization.