One can appreciate the past, but our job is the future.

One day, while riding in my folks’ 1970 Chevy Impala, my dad turned on the AM radio. I caught the last half of a Beatles song. Initially, I was angry. If he had turned on the radio two minutes earlier, I would have heard the whole thing. Then I realized that I should be happy and grateful for the part that I did hear. The car was the size of an Abrams tank and got similar gas mileage.

While everyone has a different online experience, I have noticed many people putting up collections of the 1980s. The school scene, music, entertainment. Or maybe it’s some old Michael Jackson videos (and yes, I did see the Jackson 5 live in 1974 at the Mill Run Playhouse). And there is much to say about how things used to be. I imagine that people living in the 1950s would say how wonderful the Roaring ‘20s were. It’s a human trait. We distill and remember the good. And while I am grateful that I went to school—including college—without smartphones, internet, and laptops, one cannot live in the past. It’s like driving while only looking in your rearview mirror. Eventually, you will hit something in front of you. And that something is called the future becoming the present. What we can do is take the good and the standards we gleaned from those days and use them as our yardstick against today’s culture, goods, and society. While many of our goods and services are improving, oftentimes things in the past still seem to have a qualitative or personal edge over what we have today. Miss being able to meet your loved ones right as they came off the plane?

When our kids were young, they would occasionally ask me what the best car was. I always gave them the same answer. If they had asked me 20 years earlier, I might have listed some of the premium brands like BMW or Mercedes. But........

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