What Era Would You Most Like To Live In?

On the weekend, my brother-in-law asked me what era I would live in if I could choose.

My initial response was the 70’s. I liked the idea of being a hippy, free-loving flower child. He was quick to point out that the 70’s were rife with turmoil and upheaval. He suggested that the 50’s would have been a good era because of the post war boom.

While I enjoyed the thought of all those funky cars and wearing a poodle skirt, I just couldn’t stomach the idea of saddle shoes. So, I decided I could be a shoe designer in the 50’s and save them from those horrid things.

Then, today, while I was driving home from work, I was contemplating this idea once more, and here is what I decided.

How could I live in the 50’s or the 70’s when women struggled to be equals? How could I tolerate a time when black people were segregated?

I would love to live in a simpler time, to be a flower child, to go to a sock hop, but only if I could take with me some of the advancements of our time. Therein lies the rub, you cannot have one without the other.

I would gladly hand over my iPhone for a daisy chain necklace so long as my gay friends could stand proudly at the altar. I would give you my PVR in exchange for that push button converter with cords that ran to the TV if I didn’t have to take back all those bras that were burned, and I would toss aside the internet to spend time at a malt shop with waitresses on rollers skates providing no-one got pushed to the back of the bus because of the colour of their skin.

I am thankful for the people who have fought these difficult battles. I would not step back in time and forgo all the freedoms and privileges that I have been provided.

It is with thanks to women like Dr. Emily Howard Stowe, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and Buffy Saint-Marie that I choose (should I be given the choice) to live in this day and time.