In praise of my mother's future
The old ways were about dying, not living. Walk through an old cemetery, if you are a morbid chap like me, and you’ll see people’s lives cut short by disease.
Forget the old ways. Enjoy the new after your 75 years, and counting, of the long post-war peace most of us have enjoyed. Think about the new ways, how we can defeat contagious diseases, survive heart attacks and hold off cancer in many cases until we die of something else. Take pleasure in the flow of information, some lies but most true if we have the brains to look to understand our universe. Appreciate our sexual freedoms, the political liberties we enjoy.
Thanks, Mum, for telling me about days gone by, and that the world was not as golden as it is now.
Between us we’ll share more than a century of change. Let’s celebrate the passing of old ways and toast: ‘The old ways be damned’.
Copyright: text Roger Guinery; photos Wix.
This SSOA writers' blog is made possible by grant assistance from the City of Sydney.
I'm glad I don't live in a time or place when the fittest and the healthiest among us could be displaying their amazing athleticism one day and be dead of septicaemia the next. Hopefully we can use the marvels of modern technology to avoid the worst of climate change too.