I was always promising myself that I will write every day. Then it was every other day. Then it was once a week. Now it is whenever I can...and I think I can live with it.
I am working on a poster board for nurses week. My theme is that we are all experienced. I overheard a young nurse say to her peer the other day "She is really nice...for her age. When do people start to get demented?" She was talking about me. ME!! Of all people. In my heart I am still 21, but in my body I know I am at least 50. But demented? At least I know she is still waiting for me to get there. I can remember the feeling of knowing everything there was to know in the world. I might have been 22 or 23. I started questioning what I knew at about 30 and have subsequently decided that, with each passing year, I know less and less. I know more about what makes people "tick" but am now encountering different situations that make me question what I am sure about. People are evolving. What used to be taboo is now the norm. What used to be outrageous is now commonplace. I try to keep up, but am now seeing something I have never been able to view before. I see the validity of not changing. I always have felt that people that wouldn't or couldn't change were dinosaurs. They were stuck in the past and were irrelevant in terms of importance because they did not bother to keep up with the latest information. I think most young people feel this way. When I saw the condescending look I got from my kids when I didn't know what "jacked-up" meant or when I didn't know the name of the latest group I got this kinda sharp, kinda bittersweet, kinda kick in the chest kind of feeling. I felt old and not with the times. But wait a minute. That is not me. I do read the paper everyday. I read magazines. I know who slept with who and who had surgery for her nose or liposuction. I just don't really give a damn. So the information goes in one brain cell and out the other. The things that stay are the latest treatment for breast cancer, the job outlook and joblessness rate, and what kind of benefits are available for me and mine under the new health care bill. Priorities change. It is so weird how I used to think I could change the world if I tried hard enough and now I am satisfied trying to change a little piece of zip code 60085 with working 10-12 hours a day and usually failing to achieve everything I set out to do. When did this happen?
But not changing the way I think? What is that about? I find that some of the old values are still the ones I want the world to achieve. I want my grand babies to have parents that are married to each other. I still want the word "honor" to mean something. I still want people that cheat (in any area of their life) to be chastised. I want less tolerance and more rules. In my opinion we are only happy when we do what we have to do, not when we do what we want to do.
Old fashioned? Probably. Will the world ever become this way again? I am not sure. But I will never stop trying to make the younger generation see the benefits of a more structured life.
There is one thing I am pretty sure of. In 25 years or so, the newbies will be questioning how the world has changed and what the heck has happened.
My mom did...I did...and my children will. Maybe that will be what changes us in the future.