My husband listens to a radio program about an American lady making champagne without alcohol. I overhear some of it, one remark sticks with me: “I was born back in the seventies,” she says, and it sounds as if this was a terribly long time ago. It is – in the sight of my kids, of course. But would I describe myself as born `back in the seventies´? As if this was another age completely, something we can hardly remember nowadays?
I don´t think life was so utterly different from ours today. I also don´t think life was another thing altogether 100 or even 200 years ago. We only tend to think we are much smarter and much wiser than our poor and uneducated ancestors. But that is not the truth! A long time ago some circumstances were different but most of the people back then were similar to us today: they were as smart as we and seized their chances as some of us do today. Others were lazy and got through life by avoiding hard labour or any kind of effort. They loved or hated each other and found strategies to make life work under extremely strenuous circumstances. People couldn´t foresee the future and lived pretty happily without knowing what was happening 50 Kilometres away from where they lived, not to mention faraway countries. Some believed in God, some didn´t, they enjoyed their everyday food – or got depressed over another draught … And so on and so forth.
As this lady with the champagne I was born `back in the seventies´ but for me it doesn´t seem to be a lifetime ago. It is my past, I will carry it with me until the day I die. And in the end – not much about life will be completely different by then.