A funny thing seems to happen when you turn 50. It’s like a bunch of switches flip on and off in your head and suddenly the music is too loud and all you want to do is sit and watch birds. You also become incredibly nostalgic and reminiscent, to the point of achieving the Portuguese concept of saudade, a kind of melancholic happiness where you simultaneously feel happy, yet deeply sad in some way. I find myself saying or thinking the words, “I remember when…” quite frequently, as I try to take in a world that changes at an ever-quickening pace and no longer bears any remotely passing resemblance to the one I grew up in.

I also spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the state of the world and my country, obsessed with the notion that there is a way out of this mad combination of Christofascism, late-stage capitalism, and climate change. In doing so, I often become aware of the many small ways community has been eroded by what capitalists consider financial progress, in all likelihood quite deliberately because they knew it would make it easier to do their dirty work.

I remember when I used to go camping in the Texas Hill Country two times a year for a fairly sizable festival on a private piece of land. It was about an hour’s drive from my home in Austin, half of that on county roads. When I first began attending these campouts, the people who lived in the area and drove on the roads exhibited extreme courtesy, always waving or raising a hand in greeting as they passed you on the road. It was a country way of civility I was unfamiliar with as a city dweller, where people will look at you weird if you say hi to them.

Over the years as Austin and the surrounding area became more and more popular with people from more expensive places, those friendly country neighbors were slowly bought out and replaced by people who didn’t give one shit about neighborliness or community, and the drive-by waves disappeared. So did any semblance of driving manners, as narrow county roads became filled with city commuters behaving as though they genuinely owned them.

I remember when people would yield to each other on the road instead of expecting the entire world to yield to them. I remember when people respected one another, regardless of disagreements. I remember when people really were nicer to each other around the holidays and the entire season wasn’t devoted to accumulating as much stuff for yourself as possible (I seriously doubt all those people who flock to the Black Friday sales are buying giant televisions for all the people in their lives, they’re buying them for themselves). I remember when the thought of a riot over the latest kids’ toy would have seemed like utter nonsense. I remember when a house was a home and not a commodity to be sold at the drop of a hat for a profit. I remember when a knock at the door meant a neighborly visit, not being a target for unscrupulous salespeople. I remember when I didn’t have to ignore my phone because when it rang, it was someone I actually wanted to talk to.

I know it’s normal for every aging generation to look back upon “the way things were” with fondness, especially if they were faced with great change as we have all been. The world we grew up in just doesn’t exist anymore, and we’re struggling to hold onto whatever might remain of it. And yet I do not yearn for the days of yore merely because they are old and a part of the past. In many ways, they really were better, although they were admittedly worse in many other ways that have improved greatly over those same years. I wish we as a society could take the best of what was and combine it with the best of what is and move forward instead of sitting still and arguing over what really is best, but that’s going to be difficult as long as there are disparate camps of people with very differing ideas about what “freedom” means and about what needs to be kept from the past.

In a way, that’s a point of commonality between what is increasingly obvious to be two fiercely ideological camps in our country: each is lamenting the loss of what it views as a better way of doing things, and in the process, everything is being destroyed. Abject condemnation and judgment are destroying things from one side, while well-intentioned gatekeeping is destroying things from the other side. Boil it all down and you have two groups of people acting out of fear, one justifiably so, and the other not. I cannot compare the loss of oppressive tradition with the loss of actual life. Patriarchs ‘remember when’ women and blacks “knew their place”, while progressives remember when there was an actual movement for equality and change in this country. One wants a return to subjugation, while the other wants to continue the decades-long effort to get away from that.

I want our society to get through this madness in a positive way and for me to be able to be an old person saying things like,

“I remember when fascists threatened true freedom in this country, but we banded together and said ‘never again, for anyone’.”

“I remember when Big Money put a dollar sign on everything in the world, but we banded together and said ‘some things are more important than money’.”

“I remember when a tiny handful of men and women controlled the destinies of the other 8 billion of us, but we banded together and said ‘we won’t let you do that anymore’.”

“I remember when people thought they were slaves to The Machine, but they rose up and banded together, realizing their true power.”

“I remember when men, women, and children slept in the streets, but we banded together and said ‘no more’ and gave everyone a place to live and food to eat.”

“I remember when the Sky and Sea threatened our existence because we didn’t treat them well, but we banded together and stopped poisoning our Home and now the Earth is healing.”

“I remember when people hated one another, but then we were bound by suffering and now we are friendly to one another and work together, even when we disagree, because we understand that we are not separate from one another.”