There’s an old Max Bygraves song called “Back in My Young Man’s Days” that most of you have probably never heard of. Unless, of course, you happen to be an aficionado of Turner Classic Movies or music from that era. I am both, proudly, and perhaps a little wistfully. As I go about doing the things that men my age tend to do, my mind wanders. It wanders to the news of the day, to memories of the past, and sometimes, more often than I’d like, to the sting of death. And then I put on a song like “Back in My Young Man’s Days,” and I can’t help but ask myself a hard question:Have we learned nothing?
The Same Old Story, Just Louder Now
If the leaders, the megalomaniacs, the dullards, the people who don’t seem to mind putting your life on the line, had to face the same risks as the soldiers who die by the tens of thousands every time someone rattles a saber, one has to wonder how differently the world might look. Then I open up X or scroll through some other social media platform, and what do I see? You’ve seen it too. People behaving badly. Or as one influencer bluntly puts it, “chimping out.”
It makes me wonder: is there something in the water? Something in the food? Some invisible force driving us back to the basic animal instincts of lions and tigers and bears …Go ahead. Say it. Oh my.
Seriously though, if you’ve ever watched one of those nature documentaries where the narrator calmly describes the lions stalking their prey on the savannah, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The Camera in Every Pocket
Then it dawns on me. Back in my young man’s days, nobody had a video camera in their pocket. Back in my young man’s days, we barely had a Kodak, and heaven forbid, a Polaroid was a luxury. So I have to ask: What if we had? Would we have seen the same carnage back then that we see today? Would Andy Griffith and “Leave It to Beaver” have been the anomaly, or would they have been the standard?
I suspect the truth is uncomfortable.
The Mob Was Always There
Back in my young man’s days, I saw the mob mentality firsthand. I saw boys trying to prove they were men by picking on the timid, the frail, and the girls. Nobody was immune to the red-headed bully who was feeling his oats, or, as I now suspect, feeling his hormones running amok as curly hairs sprouted in places they had never been before.The cruelty was there. The mob was there. We just didn’t have the receipts.
25,000 Mothers a Week
But some things do feel bigger now. Heavier. More absurd. Do you ever think about simpler times? Do you ever wonder how leaders like Putin and Zelensky can be okay with 25,000 young men being killed each week?
Twenty-five thousand.That means 25,000 young mothers each week who have to live with the reality that their baby is never coming home. That’s not a statistic. That’s an ocean of grief we can’t seem to stop refilling.
Food for Thought
Were your parents like the Beav’s?
Mine weren’t. But they were both there, and looking back, that mattered more than I understood at the time. Maybe we didn’t live in a simpler time. Maybe we just lived in a time with fewer cameras, fewer platforms, and fewer megaphones for our worst instincts. But the questions remain the same ones humanity has always wrestled with: Why do we hurt each other? Why do we send our sons to die? And why, with all our progress, do we keep circling back to the same sorrow?Food for thought.
What do you think? Do you find yourself longing for simpler times, or just quieter ones? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Echoes of Tomorrow
When the world teeters on the brink of nuclear annihilation, a retired Air Force general is given an impossible second chance: to rewrite history.Sent back in time to 1962 by mysterious alien beings, he wakes up trapped in the body of his ten-year-old self, armed with decades of knowledge but stripped of his power and authority. With the Cuban Missile Crisis looming, global tensions rising, and secrets hidden in the shadows of the past, he must navigate a world that sees him as a child while carrying the burden of preventing humanity’s self-destruction.As he re-encounters his family, a young JFK, and the love of his life before they’ve even met, he discovers that saving the future isn’t just about stopping a war. It’s about proving that humanity is worth saving. Along the way, secrets buried deep in Area 51, a chilling conspiracy within the U.S. government, and the cryptic motives of the alien beings reveal that the stakes are higher than he could have ever imagined.Echoes of Tomorrow is a sweeping tale of time travel, love, loss, and redemption. With the weight of the world on his young shoulders, one man must face the ultimate question: can the future truly be changed, or is humanity destined to repeat its greatest mistakes?This gripping journey will captivate fans of thought-provoking science fiction, historical intrigue, and heartfelt stories woven through time and the fragile threads of destiny.
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