The Good Old Days

So today I finished reading "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemmingway. It is a memoir, published posthumously, of Hemmingway's days as part of of an expatriate group of writers in Paris in the 1920's.

Several emotions stirred within me while reading this book. The first being a deep desire to go to Paris, not the Paris of today but the Paris he describes; one of horse racing, cafes, trips to the countryside, picnics in the park, wine on the streets (figuratively of course) etc. Reading the book also brought me strong recollections of European life. Although I have never been to Paris, the most potent memory it conjured up was when I traveled the continent and we made it to Rome on a Sunday night in March of 2004. After finding a room and offloading our belongings, me and my good friend Mr. Alex Baker, made our way out at around 10pm looking to eat and not expecting to find much. However, to my pleasant surprise, the streets were filled with people, entire families even, just walking, talking, drinking, eating and laughing. The streets were filled with noise and music. I've never known anything like it before or since.

The overriding thought it left me with though, and this is a thought which has been at the forefront of my mind in recent times, is the sense of nobility, civility and dignity which seemed to run through society back in the day, especially in men. The idea of being a gentleman, providing for one's family and living life with a simplicity and charm seems to be sorely lacking from the world today. Personally I think our Grandparents' generation is one to be admired and one which we too easily ignore. Us kids nowadays seem to be raised like bloody wolves in the wild...get what is yours and to hell with everyone else. Grab and Push. Grab and Push.

Everything moves a lot quicker nowadays, we simply don't have time to help one another, it seems. I'm not blaming anyone, and I'm certainly not putting myself above it all. I'm just saying, that old school type of thinking, one which I admire, is becoming an ancient myth. Which is a shame. With the constant threat of annihilation (brought by two world wars - and one world cup, boom boom), people learned to be more grateful for life itself rather than material possessions they had.

I'm probably romanticising the whole thing more than I should. I'm sure they had the same sh*t we have got today, just differently packaged. I don't know, maybe instead of gang violence and happy slapping, they had bootlegging and fisticuffs! I'd like to think though that somehow they didn't. And that's a thought that keeps me smiling.

"They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure."

— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)