I was cleaning out my fridge today and decided I need to dispose of the little bit of eggnog I had left. As I was doing so I thought about how I wasn’t going to have anymore until next Christmas. I wasn’t sad or bummed about it, I just appreciate that it’s one of those special things that I only enjoy because I don’t have it year round.
I think this is one of the problems in our society today. We want what we want when we want it and that urge is way overindulged now. The result of this is that not much is special anymore. We need things that are special. We need small things to look forward to.
When I was a little girl growing up in the 80’s I remember how excited I was when the annual Christmas shows came on TV. Frosty the Snowman, Santa Clause is Comin’ to town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer were my favorites. We had to wait for the TV Guide to come so we could see when they would be on and then it became an occasion we planned for. The whole family sitting around the TV and, in my snapshot memory of it, we had ice cream, which was also something special.
Now, we can watch pretty much whatever we want whenever we want. Year round. There is no ‘it’s only on once a year’ occasion about it. If we kept up our Christmas lights & trees all year long, it would no longer be special. It would be normal.
This is the world our kids are growing up in. This is the world we have created for them and then we can’t believe it when they grow up expecting everything to be handed to them when and how they want it. Nothing is good enough. It’s all about what’s bigger & better.
One of the most ridiculous and annoying examples for me is ‘promposals’. The extent kids go to for this is mind blowing. When I was in high school, my boyfriend didn’t ask me to the prom, we were dating, it was a given that we were going together. When it came time for my son to go to prom I refused to let him go overboard. I told him that one day he will propose marriage to a woman. That’s a proposal to make elaborate. How is it going to be special if their freaking ‘promposal’ is over the top? When and why did we start treating prom like a freaking wedding? Seriously people, pull the reigns.
I don’t know the answer to this issue, maybe because I don’t understand how other people don’t see the problem we’ve created in the younger generations. In trying to make life easier for our kids we have created higher expectations and now they have to do twice the workload for not enough pay.
Need me to explain that last one?
Making things easier, with advancement of technology mostly, didn’t do anything more than make us more efficient. That meant we could get the same amount of work done in less time. What benefit did that have? None. The result is a bigger workload for the same pay. Not time off. Not more money. More work. Not to mention the jobs that are now obsolete.
Sorry, I’ll step off my soapbox.
The bottom line is we need to find a way to make small things special again. We need to lower the bar a bit and we need to draw lines and have boundaries. They are important because without them, nothing is special.