Pessimistic Politics: Just Put it Back the Way it Was

Let me tell you, the world is a changing place. It’s really easy to see that. Hell, we can't deny it. There’s new stuff popping up all the time, not that we necessarily notice it. It only seems that we, as a species, recognize change when something we care for is taken away. Loss really hits home for us.

If you haven’t figure it out by now, I’m a very nostalgic person. When I visit childhood friends, I spend more time than I should reminiscing about the past. I still collect NES games because I still recall those great days when the system was cutting edge and childhood was forever. I insist on hanging onto my 133 MHz Packard Bell, because I spent hundreds of hours building DOOM WADs on it back in the good old days of high school, and I’m not letting go of my old pal anytime soon. None of this is very practical, but I’m not a very practical person. Not always.

So it came as a big disappointment to me when I noticed all of the changes on a recent trip to my mother’s cottage. As I talked about in a previous article, the cottage is one of those places that holds a lot of good memories, the kind of place that doesn't evolve no matter what and therefore is an excellent place to raise my head out of the smog of everyday life.

My mother and I went up there in one of our most sacred of traditions, that being the opening of the cottage. This involves cleaning up the remains of bugs that snuck in over the winter, only to realize far too late that it may have been warmer outside than in the cottage and mowing the maple tree-sized grass. It’s also part of the tradition that I climb into the soggy pits of Hell and connect the plumbing (which, again, I wrote about before).

With all of these fine traditions, it’s hard to believe anything could change up at the cottage. I firmly believed that it would stay the same forever. It turns out I’m firmly an idiot.

The first indication of doom presented itself when we drove through the town of Adrian, a decent sized town with a good number of fast food restaurants for weary travels. We usually stop at Rally’s for a bite to eat. I only insist on this specifically because the location closest to us closed down, and I usually don’t feel like driving the extra three miles to the next one for a burger.

After pulling out of Rally’s, I thought to myself that an ice cream at TCBY was in order after the work was done. I casually glanced at the spot where TCBY was located, but instead of the familiar acronym-laden sign, I saw a sign for a generic Coney Island restaurant. I shouted my discontent and sulked about the situation, my instincts telling me that the worst was yet to come.

The rest of the trip went without incident, which was good, because the next incident was more than enough to cover for the missing ones. When we got there, I beheld the horror of what happened to the island across from the channel that was next to the cottage. I wrote about how the waterway surrounding the area has become a hotbed for rich people building big houses as of late. The island across the channel has become the latest victim of human progress.

The island, which was the only thing distinguishing our channel and a nearby lake from the main lake, was once owned by a single person and contained a single house by the lake. Most of the island’s waterfront was overgrown with vegetation, giving the entire area a natural, peaceful look. Eventually, the island was purchased for a reported one million dollars. The owner wanted to sell it off for six million, and at that point, we all knew that development wasn’t far behind.

The island was sold and plotted off, but for some reason, I never suspected much would change. Sure, we’d have to stare at construction for several months and some shiny, new, better-than-our-place condos for the rest of our lives, but at least the natural beauty of the shore line would somehow remain intact.

I was on a streak of stupidity that day.

What we beheld was a complete lack of overgrown brush on the shoreline. The trees and bushes that once grew proudly on the water’s edge were gone, replaced by mowed grass. I stared in awe and horror as I looked down the channel, which once seemed so large and winding. With the cover of the trees and bushes gone, it seemed so small and pathetic. As the wind, once restrained by the trees, ripped at the water, I almost felt the erosion of our shore increase due to the wind’s lack of restraint. As I kept muttering “I hate this,” I realized yet another wonder of nature was torn down for the benefit of rich idiots.

I’m sure there are some people who would cite the hypocrisy of this emotion. After all, someone came in, destroyed the nature, and built up the cottage that I’m currently defending the solidarity of. How is it fair to accuse those involved in the island’s development of being in the wrong?

Yeah, it’s not a logical feeling, but what feelings really are? I can try to defend it by saying we were here first, rely on a debate about how it could be argued that those who use the last of a resource are worse than those who started using the resource in the first place, or try to justify my feelings in some logical and tangible way. Well, I’m not going to bother, because someone will always argue that my “inconvenience” is someone else’s greater gain. I’m simply venting my nostalgic feelings, so settle down. We all do it, I just have a website and get to take up your time with it.

The final, though less urgent blow came when we checked out the cottage’s porch. It had gotten damaged over the winter, so we had to have it repaired. The roofers, apparently aided by refreshing beverages, made it a point to rip out the eaves trough without replacing it, put a few holes in the picnic table, and neglected to paint the boards they replaced, making the porch roof look like some pathetic wooden chimera. It doesn’t have much to do with big changes in life, but I wanted to complain about the roofers somehow.

Change is something that cuts to the heart of nostalgic fools like myself. We try to hide in our past, interacting with the world only as much as we need or want to, and then zipping back into our holes when we’re finished. It’s counter-productive in the scheme of social advancement, but the way I figure it, there are enough go-getters out there to fill the void.

I guess the lesson that we can learn is don't put a lot of faith in things that you can’t control. Not that I’m suggesting that you should put much more faith in things you can control. In fact, let’s be honest here, how many things can you say you really control? Even a standard idiot could control something as simple as your heart rate simply by not watching where they are going in their SUV.

Basically, understand that everything in life lacks permanence. Even great super powers like America, China, McDonalds, Pepsi, and Michael Jackson will eventually disappear (okay, I’m not really all that sure about Michael Jackson). You, too, are going to die some day. I know you don’t want to think about it. I know I don’t want to think about it. Mortality sucks, but you have to go on living and get the most out of it.

How do you do this? Hell if I know. I don’t know how you get your jollies, and I frankly don’t care to know, but I definitely advise some fun and fulfillment before you sky dive into your grave. You know what you like, so go and do it, just don’t hurt anyone, unless they’re into that sort of thing.

As for me, I’m heading up to the cottage, stopping only to get a white-chocolate mousse from TCBY… oh, wait, can’t do that anymore. Well, at least I can get up to the cottage and gaze at the wondrous natural beauty of the waterfront… crap, can’t do that anymore either. Well, I could check out the perfectly painted porch and high-quality eaves trough… um…

Oh, forget it.