Changing Times

I've got a lot of different accounts that are protected by various user names and passwords.  There is my ATM card, my credit cards, online banking accounts, my cable company, my Facebook and MySpace accounts, several email accounts, school accounts, etc, etc.  As it has been said so many times before (my way for apologizing for the cliche´that I'm about to write), the list goes on and on.  Despite all of the above, and I could list many more, I somehow can remember all my different user names and passwords off the top of my head, although sometimes it takes a little while if I have not utilized them for some time.  It's really a crazy world that we live in.  It's got me spinning around a little.

When I was growing up,  life was not that complicated.  We didn't have all these various accounts that could be accessed online with all these secret codes.  Nor, of course, did we have all of the technology of today.  Let's see, if I drifted back to when I was about eight-years-old, to the year 1972, for example, what could I remember about then?  I may be exaggerating but I swear that simple calculators were the size of toaster ovens and cost about $500.  There were no video games- not even in the arcades.  Pinball machines were the thing.  Cable TV did not really exist until a few years later.  Goal posts in the NFL were at the goal line and there was no such thing as overtime.  There were no fax machines, or mobile phones.  No VCRs or DVD players.  No cruise control or even micro wave ovens.  We didn't get ours until around 1976 and it was considered newfangled and space-age, man.   Still, somehow we thought things were really advanced with trash compacters and window air conditioning and whatever other new thing someone had recently obtained on the block.    

I remember when it was a big thing to get a hotel room with a phone and a color TV in it.  Or should I say motel room?

As kids, it seemed we had more freedom also.  Before I turned ten, I would regularly disappear with my brother and friends all day and come back around nine at night with not even a phone call in between.  My parents had no idea where we were but that seemed to be the norm back then.  If some kid's parents expected them to call, we thought they were very strict.  Sometimes we would drive for miles on our bikes and no one would bat an eye.  

These days, either it has become a more dangerous world or there is just more media attention in that regard.  Whatever the case, parents are far more protective of their children than they used to be.  While I think there's good reason for that, I also think that kids growing up today do not experience that same sort of adventure and freedom that kids of my generation experienced.

Back to how life has become so complicated.  Sometimes I think I should write all the login information down but experts warn you not to do that.  I could give every account the same user name and password but experts warn you not to do that too.  In essence, they expect you do have all these different letters and numbers in your head without writing them down.  As you get older, I suspect it will be a little harder, although I have not experienced that yet...I think.

Anyway, I haven't written for awhile and in my return I'm rambling but I think there is a point to all of this.  Life is different than it used to be.  It didn't happen overnight but it kind of gradually just crept up on me.  I'm okay with it.  I'm not a super-fast texter or computer aficionado or anything but I don't really care how much society changes.  I like the way things used to be to a large extent and I like the way things are now to a large extent as well.  There are certain things I could do without in both eras but I don't really care that much to tell you the truth.

The main thing is that I understand through all these changes I have essentially stayed the same person.  My viewpoint may be a little different and the cells of my body have completely changed several times over but I'm still me.  Just recently, I was thinking of my many childhood memories before I turned five and not just thinking about the events but what my consciousness was like then.  I didn't think about things like sex or death like I do now but the person inside that little body was still me,  somewhere in there.  And I guess I will go on being me even with the changes that are to come.  For example, vinyl records were the thing back then, but then came 8-tracks, cassettes and cds.  Now it's pretty much digital music.  But it's still music.  

I suspect I'll see some more changes in the upcoming years, in fact I'm sure I will.  They will be so gradual that I won't notice so much but when I look back, it will be like, whew, remember that?  Time really has passed!  Yes, time passes and things change but I have remained the same, essentially.  Logically, I also conclude that I will somehow exist after the big change for me, the death of my current body.  Don't know where I will be after this lifetime but I'm pretty sure I'll be somewhere, in some land where changes are still taking place.  Of course, I'd like to go to a place with a little more security and continuity but that discussion is for another place and another time.  I hear you have to gradually qualify yourself to go to a place like that.