I enjoy looking at today's events, habits and attitudes in the context of how they fit into history. Not that I know that much about history, mind you. My husband is a much better historian than I ever was, in fact I was always the one asleep in the back of the classroom during that class in high school. But I did wake up for periods of time, and during those precious moments I gathered enough information to seem knowledgeable on the subject (emphasis on the word 'seem'), so I'm going to lay some of this information on you now, and hope that it will skate by as authoritative!
I love seeing renderings of any kind that show the everyday life of common man through history. In particular, I enjoy seeing the architecture of their homes, but I am also interested in how they cooked, how they got around, how they dressed, how they wore their hair, what they ate, what they did for work. So whenever we see a historical movie or play, or if we go to a museum, or if I am reading a book or looking around on the web, I am drawn to those parts of whatever is presented. If it happens to be a movie, I have to keep asking others what just happened in the plot, because I was busy looking at the amazing dresses. It's SO annoying.
ahem.
To them, I mean.
As time has passed, all 'modern countries', especially those in Europe and North America, have evolved into societies whose culture is driven by comfort and convenience. Gone are silly things like corsets, powdered wigs, stiff, uncomfortable furniture and wagons with wooden wheels and seats. This is a wonderful thing, really. Clothes are comfortable and easy to launder, haircuts are designed for easy care, shoes are made with state-of-the-art materials for comfortable walking (if we choose them over fashionable shoes) and who can deny that the La-Z-boy is anything but comfy? Our homes are weather-proofed with the latest insulation, and can be built with long-lasting and low-maintenance materials, such as plasticized wood, asphalt shingles and long-lasting paint products. Roads are paved, thank goodness!
As middle class citizens, we have the kinds of comforts that the elite of history could only have dreamed of, even with all their servants, vehicles and conveniences of the day. If you can afford to have your yard mowed and your house cleaned once a week, you're even better off. While unlike the historical elite we still have to work for a living, grocery shop, do the laundry, make repairs to the house, and do our own cooking, these are usually not difficult tasks, with our modern conveniences. And we have indoor plumbing, comfortable air-conditioned cars to drive us everywhere, refrigerators to provide us with that midnight snack, washing machines, cell phones, computers, and all the rest, that make the logistics of life so much easier, servants or no.
Yes, today we can do almost anything more quickly and easily except sleep. As I write, I received a phone call from summer camp personnel, reminding me of the need to submit the online health form for our camper. Without removing my backside from the chair, and by moving approximately 20 small muscles in my hands, I went to the site, filled in the information and submitted it within moments, returning to my writing with this sentence. Now what duke of old could have ever accomplished that so quickly and easily, even with five servants to do his bidding? OK, there was no such thing as summer camp back then, but you get my point, right?
While it certainly is wonderful to be able to carry out the mundane tasks of life with such ease, there is a downside of this -- we feel able, almost compelled, therefore, to do more with our days. Not only that, but many of our conveniences in some ways create more work for us. Here is one example. Remember the expression 'laundry day'? It used to be that laundry took a while, without the machine. The common man did not have much in the way of clothes, because they were made by hand, and so were expensive. Bedrooms in homes back then didn't have closets because there was no need. Those few clothes in the family had to be washed regularly, and the washing process certainly took more physical effort than it does now. Nothing like a river, a good flat rock and some lye to get clothes clean.
Today, clothes are easy to come by, and we have washing machines, so one would think that that part of our lives must be simpler. But no-no-no! Because it is easy to own a lot of clothes these days, we do. So now we all have closets loaded with cheap clothing, creating the necessity of drying, folding, hanging, sorting, repairing and ultimately disposing of 100 pieces of clothing per person in any given family, not to mention the hours we spend haranguing our kids to pick them all up off the floor. For those of you who have ever carted five black trash bags filled with old clothes, to the second-hand shop, you know what I mean. Owning this many clothes takes a lot of work at times. To me it seems a bit unnatural to have so many clothes that we have to work for the clothes instead of them working for us. And the biggest irony, speaking for myself, is that I wear perhaps 20% of the clothes that I own. I just told my 'camper' to go clean her room. Again. It looks like a cyclone has just swept through, so I'm renting a backhoe to help her. If the kid had three little muslin dresses to her name, life would be grand. Human beings were not meant to own 20 pairs of pants, 50 shirts, 10 skirts, 18 dresses and countless pairs of shoes (my own countless pairs of shoes are all black, oddly).
Here is another example. In days gone by, if you moved any distance away from your community, it usually meant that you might never see those friends, neighbors and relatives again in this life. The move itself was laborious and time consuming perhaps, but once in the new home, one made new friends and went on with life. Today, with the advent of regular mail, email, phone, video conference, and all the other modern forms of communication, we can stay in touch. So we begin to feel as though we should. And we feel guilty if we don't. Personally, I have moved many times in my life (because the aforementioned transportation makes it relatively easy, and there are jobs and modern communities everywhere), and I made friends all along the way. Same with my husband, before we were married, and since we've been married, we've moved no less than five times, not counting two more times within a community, and including a stint living overseas. (Which, by the way, took about 24 hours to travel to initially, compared to the six weeks on a freighter spent by the generation before us, traveling to the same country in the 1940's.)
So between us, we have amassed quite a list of 'friends to keep in touch with'. At one point, our Christmas list had nearly 100 names. Well, I'm sorry, but it just isn't rational to try to keep in touch with that many people. Even using a standard Christmas letter, and with Facebook, email and everything else, it just isn't rational. Period. I finally had to sit down one day and speak to myself reasonably about how important I really am to all those other people. Are they sitting by the mailbox or the phone just waiting for me to communicate with them and change their lives? No. So we started to let some of those 'long distance' friendships go, and I have to say that it does create a mixture of guilt, relief, and resignation for me, at just not being able to keep all the balls in the air.
Not to mention that a major move for a family today is, well, a major move. Our family has so much stuff, that in our last move I was reduced to tears. Seriously. I just could not pack and haul one more thing. Families in generations past simply didn't have all this stuff. Life was much easier that way. The irony today is that we can afford to have all this stuff, but we can't quite afford to have it all packed, moved, unpacked and put in place for us, unless you have a great corporate relocation package. Naturally, we don't, so I have informed The Husband that we will not be moving again.
Ever.
Unless, of course, he gets a great corporate relocation package.
Here is one more example. The range of activities, hobbies and special events available to us as a society is mind-boggling. And the web only introduces more options for us. This development in the world of 'optional activities' wreaks havoc with our kids, especially. There are so many great activities available for kids, and naturally our kids want to do all of them. It takes real self-control to say 'no' and force our children to pick one or two things that they like and just do those. And this is in addition to all of the socializing that they want to do, in person and by all means electronic, (which options are also many) and all the mountains of homework they have. Personally, I can say that my kids have been run ragged at times, and I've had to make them cut back just to live a semblance of a normal life.
Yes, now that we can do more, think about all the many things we cram into a day. We do our Pilates and tidy the house in the morning, run to the grocery store and spend $150 on groceries, bring them home and put them away in about 3 hours; we call to make an appointment to get the car repaired, and go online to pay the bills. Then we pick up the kids and take them to their after-school activities, squeeze in coffee with a friend, pick up the kids, come home and make that 30 minute meal, pop the dishes into the dishwasher and the laundry into the washing machine, make some calls about our meetings all week, watch a little TV, read a book, shower and head to bed. It's complicated, doggone it!
Generations before us could never have lived this way, without all the conveniences we have, and so life was simpler -- it had to be. One day for laundry and mending and changing beds. One day for shopping and food preparation for the next few days (read 'baking bread by hand'). One day to clean the house. A day or two to tend the garden or fields. A day for making repairs and general housekeeping. A day of rest. Repeat. Yes, life was simpler then, and that wasn't all bad.
After all this reading, you would think that I would have made my point by now, but inexplicably, I haven't! All of the blabbing above was just me getting sidetracked on the topic of cramming too much into life. Sorry you had to read all that, but consider it a bonus if you enjoyed it, and I hope it made some sense to you. I think I got sidetracked at the beginning of paragraph 6.
So let me digress a bit. Please go back up to the end of paragraph 5, and then come back here.
Thanks. Here is my real point:
All of that physical activity of bygone eras was good for those generations before us, because our bodies were built to be used.
Yes, they will run down in time as we become old, but in the meantime, lack of use has a very negative impact on the body. To remain strong, bones and muscles must be used regularly beyond what is easy for them, and joints also must be moved regularly to stay supple and lubricated. The heart and lungs must be pushed a little with regular activity to keep them healthy. Now think about all of the great conveniences we enjoy today. We have managed to completely short circuit all of the activities that the body needs to remain in top form. We no longer need to walk everywhere, in fact, we hardly need to walk anywhere. (I hate to admit it, but I drive from the Walmart to the grocery store in the same parking lot.) All the heavy lifting of wet clothes on laundry day is avoided. No need to carry the bags of groceries all the way home -- the car does that. We don't need to run over to the neighbor's house to ask a question -- we have (take your pick) land line telephone, cell phone call, text message, email, Facebook, video chat -- everything except mental telepathy it seems, which surely must be just around the corner. Lugging water from the river is definitely long gone (thank goodness!). Chopping wood? Right. Hand me that Husqvarna over there. Push mower? 'Don't make me laugh', you say, as you climb aboard your 'Nothing Runs Like a Deere' lawn tractor.
I'm sure you see what I mean.
So what is one to do? Why, introduce artificial exercise to compensate, naturally! Can you imagine the pioneers of our country hittin' the gym and grabbin' a latte at Starbucks before they went to the office in the morning? Their 'gym' was the land around their home. Their 'weight machine' was all that wood that needed splitting. Their 'spinning class' was a hurried trip to town, on foot, three miles away. So the Great Irony of all of our modern conveniences is that we must spend extra time each week to replace all of the activities that we have worked so hard to eliminate from our lives!
It is to laugh, as they say.
The irony of this has made me laugh for a long time, but it has never actually made me join a gym. And this is the danger. If we don't replace that natural activity needed by the body, we age prematurely and set ourselves up for all kinds of problems, like heart disease and diabetes, because it's so easy to become overweight. And this brings me to a related topic.
The other thing that works against us is the ready availability of tons of food, the kind of availability that no generation before us ever had. Food had to be raised at home or bartered for by many millions of people for thousands of years before us. Sweets, in particular, were always in short supply and sold for a premium, if they were available at all. Sugar was always expensive -- there were no 5 lb bags at the grocery store, for $2.49. For many countries, and for many centuries, honey was one of the few available sweeteners, and was hard to come by. Things like cake and cookies were for special occasions, a few times per year, if that. There was no 1/2 mile long wall of delicious carbohydrate-laden snacks in the grocery store -- everything from chips to candy, to baked goods, pastas, crackers and all the rest.
Dessert back then was an apple, and it was a wonderfully sweet treat to any kid, in part because they were seasonal and could not be had any day of the year in the produce department, preferably packaged in shrink wrap on a little styrofoam tray. Have you tried offering your child the choice between an apple or a cookie lately? Right. Thought so. I can honestly say that my son, up until he was about three, would take the apple, but those days are long gone now, I assure you.
Today we are faced continually with images of every kind of food everywhere we go. There is no escape. Open a magazine, turn on the TV, go online, drive past a billboard, and all that delicious food is waving, in its lascivious glory, right in front of our faces. (I'm proud to say that I wrote the words 'lascivious' and 'food', above, in the same sentence long before the term 'food porn' existed.) So of course we're getting fatter! And it's no surprise that heart disease and diabetes are a problem for us. The pancreas was not intended to process such a constant onslaught of carbohydrates, and the heart was not meant to support such large bodies produced by overeating, not meant to handle all the animal fats we consume -- another commodity hitherto scarce, but today to be found everywhere, and cheaply, regardless of those $7.99/lb. New York strip steaks. The very lack of all these kinds of foods in generations past, while difficult for the people living in those times, kept them healthy! A subsistence diet of home grown local, seasonal fruits and vegetables, the starch that would be common in the culture, and a smattering of meat and sweets when it could be afforded, was a way of life for the common man for thousands of years.
I had a nice lesson on this topic recently (not that it will alter my personal lifestyle, but it was a nice lesson). My oldest daughter has been in Costa Rica for nearly six months on a language and culture immersion program. She is staying with a wonderful, modern, middle-class family near a large city. I had the pleasure of visiting her for two weeks, and getting to know her family and see the country, which is beautiful. The night I arrived, dinner was:
Boiled potatoes
White rice
Fried bananas
Juice from fresh fruit put through the blender
No meat. Very simple, very traditional for that area. Meat is a precious commodity and is only eaten in small amounts 2-3 times per week, if that. And, although the meal was based on carbohydrates, vegetables are also included in most meals, and quantities are kept small, which is key. Their refrigerator is about 40" tall, with a tiny, tiny freezer. (Compare this to my 5-foot wide refrigerator/freezer combo, which I love). It was quite a culture shock, and a good one. Even in this modern day, in a modern family, they still practice subsistence eating. Hey! I think I just coined a new term! Someone take that and run with it, will ya? You can build a whole new diet industry off that term, and all I ask is a percentage.
Do you remember the movie 'Wall-e'? This little robot goes to a huge space community where everyone rides around on moving barcaloungers, and everything is automated for them. They have a video screen and computer on board that does everything they need done, they have all the food they could possibly want -- it's all there. They don't even need to walk anymore, so they don't. And all of the people in the space community are impossibly HUGE -- hardly able to move, because they no longer need to. I realized with horror while watching this movie that we are halfway there.
OK,I guess I've beat that subject to death, so I'll stop.
All the modernization is so good. SO good. I cannot imagine living back in those times myself, but they certainly did have their advantages. If only we could have all the conveniences of today, while maintaining a balance for ourselves that is healthy, in both mind and body. Fewer belongings. More physical activity. A nice reasonable approach to eating. Less busy-ness in our lives.
It's possible, but it really takes a change of heart to accomplish. I think maybe I'll start small. Maybe I'll walk in to Burger King instead of using the drive-through, and have a Buck Double instead of a Whopper. Yeah. That's a good start.
