Yesterday

I no longer believe that I will get to live in the future I dreamed of when I was growing up.

I grew up in a low-to-middle class suburban area, just few kilometers outside my country’s capital city. On a warm summer night, if I listened hard enough, I could hear the city buzzing - a siren from a police car, an occasional motorcycle screaming down the street, a helicopter sometimes, an airplane if we were lucky. But that’s the city.

I grew up in a two story house that my father and my grandfather built themselves. We had a nice backyard where mother used to plant flowers, a garage for the family car. The whole street was like that. I was a kid. There were so many kids, I couldn’t even count them all.

Everyone took care of everyone.

I could go to my best friend’s house and just walk in there, up the stairs and into her room. We’d take turns playing on her computer, I believe it was Diablo. Her mom would always bring us snacks and icecream.

Our parents all had cars.

My parents certainly remember a time when nearly everyone they knew would watch the same primetime TV at the same hour, and the next day everyone would talk about that particular episode. That’s definitely gone, with streaming and personalised recommendations and the decline of conventional TV.

This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be when the world was younger and you had everything to lose? Switchfoot

Even though I never learned how to ride one, everybody had bicycles, we’d go to the local abandoned places and explore. There used to be an old and abandoned excavator, it was huge and powerful and at the same time had a very comfortable feeling. Perhaps the person who used to operate it in the past would sit there, move some dirt, perhaps drink some coffee, read the paper and at the end of the day go back to his family.

It was as big as a house.

Back then I thought that when I grow up and have my own house and my own kids, they would get to experience all the same things and they would get to dream and play and grow up… But no, the same type of house that I grew up in, now would cost me an insane amount. I am not okay with this but then again I have no idea how to change anything about the situation.

When I was a kid there were older men in my neighbourhood that would just work on their cars in their front yards, smoke cigars, hang around drinking beer and talking about football. They seemed so happy.

I can’t imagine ever having that again.

When I look back

I see the landscapes
That I have walked through
But it is different

All the great trees are gone
It seems there are
Remnants of them

But it is the afterglow
Inside of you

Of all those you met

Who meant something in your life. Olav Rex, August 1977