Since I am of the highest intelligence I decided that, in addition to a full course load, 2 jobs, and a Bonhoeffer biography, that I would also add Austen's Pride and Prejudice to my already full burden of work. It seemed a like a good idea at the time at least, and plus it allows me to try out my new nook that I got for Christmas.
Anyway, I'm not real far in the book yet (chapter 9 of volume 1), but as I read this I can't help but think of the era in which this story takes place. I'm sure the novel idealizes things a bit, but it seems like such a perfect world and system. There are well defined roles for people in society and the people that are in those roles seem perfectly content to fulfill them; no one is trying usurp or rebel or anything like that, and things just move along perfectly. No one seems rushed or in a hurry; they seem to have plenty of time to get things done and plenty of time (and will) to invest in developing relationships with others.
So as I think about what life is like today; how there never seems to be enough time to get things done; how we don't seem to have much interest in developing relationships with others; how people are constantly trying to rebel and usurp things; how instead of everything moving so smoothly along things instead move so roughly and clumsily, or not at all.
Compared to today those times seems so much better and ideal than the ones that I live in today where everything is so chaotic and seems to get more chaotic by the day.
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
(Ecclesiastes 7:10 ESV)
I wonder if it is even good that I long for those days. I never lived during those days and so have no idea what they were like, but I do live in these days and I know what these days are like, and I know that those days look much better than these days. Looking back on those days it seems like there was a system in place and then someone, who didn't know what they were doing, messed with the system, perhaps even with good intentions, and now it is less efficient than it was before because it is not running like it is supposed to. Usually though when someone who doesn't know what they are doing tries to fix something they don't much about they end up making things worse rather than better.
So this is my conclusion on the matter: we should not be longing for days that are past; they are past and they will not be brought back. Our days have their own challenges and we need to meet those challenges and not try to avoid them. We can blame whoever we want for bringing us to this point, but if we ever want to remedy the ills of our days we must get to work on correcting them. If we try to avoid this the only thing that we will succeed in doing is spreading the diseases throughout this generation and then passing it on to the next one so that they may spread it even further.
So the next question then is: how do we meet the challenges of our days? Well, how much time do you have...?
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