1980
I remember this year.
It’s the first year I can trace a thought and know it was mine. I was nine years old, beginning to form opinions and trying to make sense of the world around me.
The world was different then.
Most people point to the obvious things. The phone hanging on the kitchen wall. The curly cord stretched halfway across the house. The evening news that came on at a set time and disappeared until tomorrow. Information had boundaries. It didn’t travel in your pocket or follow you through the day.
In many ways, it was a good time to grow up.
But as I look back now, I can also see cracks running through that world. Some were visible. Others were hidden in plain sight. As a child, I didn’t always understand what I was seeing. Sometimes I saw enough to know something wasn’t right. Sometimes I wouldn’t understand it until years later.
Authority figures were more authoritarian. Whether they were right or wrong, questioning them wasn’t common. You listened. You adjusted. You got in line.
There were also subjects that rarely made it into the open. Struggles inside families. Broken relationships. Personal wounds. Problems that everyone seemed to know existed, yet few people were willing to discuss. Many things that should have been brought into the light remained behind closed doors.
I think about that whenever someone talks about the “good old days.”
It’s easy to look at our current moment and conclude that everything is getting worse. Every problem is broadcast. Every disagreement is amplified. Every failure seems impossible to ignore.
But I wonder if part of what we’re seeing isn’t simply that more of life is visible than it used to be.
The problems aren’t always new. The spotlight is.
The past wasn’t necessarily cleaner. In many ways, it was quieter. And quiet has a way of hiding things that need to be seen.
So I’m not interested in going backward. I’m more interested in what we do with the clarity we’ve been given. Because once something is brought into the light, we have a choice. Ignore it, exploit it, or begin the work of healing it.
Scripture reminds us that “everything exposed by the light becomes visible” (Ephesians 5:13). That can be uncomfortable. Sometimes painful. But light has always been God’s first step toward restoration.
The good old days had their strengths. So does today.
The challenge is having the wisdom to learn from both.
If this resonates, share it. Someone else may need it today.
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