In My Day

If you’ve ever said, ‘in my day’ to preface anything or to ruminate and indulge in nostalgia, or to compare ‘your day’ to the present and why back then was better… give your fucking head a wobble. There’s nothing more galling than listening to some bore wang on about the fact that way back then something was better, even though it was actually worse. If your rose tinted nostalgia leads you to reel off that because you lived through hardship that meant it was great and now everything is easy and so therefore worse, just reread what I’ve written and properly think about. And yeah, you lived through hardship, and yeah that’s shit, but that doesn’t mean we should live through the same hardship now. And I’ll listen to your tales and use them to ensure that doesn’t happen again, but it wasn’t fucking better back then.

The saying is bollocks. Nostalgia is a fucker, because humans are wired to forget the bad feelings we felt when bad stuff was happening, so we know something was bad, but our feelings mutate to ensure that we feel good. So we get trapped in this thing where we look back, for example, on the fact that we didn’t have central heating or a hot shower and we think that it made us as a human, made us stronger. No it didn’t. It meant you were cold and were more prone to illness and you were luckier than some that you lived to tell the tale. And honestly, fuck off if you think I should have to go through that to make me a strong person. I’ll gain my strength in other ways thanks.

If someone says ‘in my day’ near me I immediately think, they think, more about the past than the present and the future. We should learn from history, we should take what has happened into account… and then make things better now, not wish they were worse now and we need to regress. Nowadays I get a bit affronted by it. If you’re living and breathing now then start thinking more about the here and now. You’re living life now, do something to make things better now. And if you tell me you’re too long in the tooth, then I’ll call bullshit. It’s never too late. And look if you still think back in your day things were better, alright that’s nice, but fucking work hard to make things better now, rather than whinging about it.

There is a caveat to everything I’ve said. Cadbury’s chocolate. It’s all getting smaller and less tastier. Back in my day it was better and I want it all back.