Isn’t nostalgia a funny thing? It’s the rose colored glasses we all look through to see our childhoods or youth. It’s what tells us that what we watched/listened to/did back then is somehow better than the way things are now.

Our generation loves to reminisce about the old days and times before we were adults. We all know how much our parents or our professors love to say, “We hauled our books uphill 8 miles both ways in 7 feet of snow and I was thankful,” or similar stories of hardships.

Will we tell our children similar stories? Will we tell them of a time before everyone had cell phones, and before the Internet wasn’t in every house?

Politicians love to remind us all of the good old days of American prosperity and how we should return to those policies and ideas.

But is that what we want? Should we strive to return to the old ways? Do we live in an America so afraid of change that our only thought is to do everything possible to get back to the “easy days”?

I’d like to think that the world we live in can do something special and not just follow in the footsteps of our fathers and forefathers. As we in this generation rise into adulthood and accept our due responsibilities, we should be blazing a new path in the world.

The fact of the matter is that the old days were easy days. We love the 90s so much because none of us had jobs or real responsibilities. Our biggest problems were the next vocabulary and cursive quizzes. But now, the problems are a crippled economy, a divided government and a country that can change and become something great.

But look what we have going for us: the world has never been a faster or easier place to communicate. As I mentioned last week, our generational culture is the strongest ever. Additionally, we as a generation have attended college in the greatest numbers. So, theoretically, we should be the most intelligent generation around.

All we have to do is stop looking back at the days of our youth and start walking ahead into the bright future that we can make for ourselves. I’m not telling you to take a side; that’s not my job. I just want to encourage you to stand out and make the world your own.