I certainly don't miss the hot summer days when the only cooling devices were fans that just blew the hot air around, or the cold winter days when we stoked the coal furnace in the morning and huddled over a vent, inhaling coal dust.  It was sometimes a long wait before the warmth penetrated the entire house.

I've always loved music, but the bulky phonograph records were cumbersome and easily damaged.  Before stereophonic recording equipment was developed, the sound quality was terrible; instruments sounded tinny and far away, scarcely how they sounded in "real life."  Stereo, tapes, and CDs changed all that – for the better.  Having lifelike recorded music and being able to listen to it wherever and whenever I want has certainly made my life better than it was in the so-called good old days.

Much the same is true of movies.  We old-timers have a point when we complain about the excesses in modern films, where sometimes there's little to admire except the wizardry of the special effects artists.  However, when I watch one of the old movies that I fondly recall, I usually come away wondering why I thought it was so great.  These old movies have a quaint, nostalgic appeal for me, but that's about all.

Even as we cherish our memories of the "good old days," the means of preserving these memories have multiplied and improved in mind-boggling ways, especially with the dawning of the digital age.  Much as I may reminisce fondly about the joys of the Kodak Brownie box camera that I had when I was a kid and that took only black-and-white photos on film that had to be taken to the drug store to be developed, I wouldn't want to be stuck with such a primitive device today.  Sure, operating the new digital cameras can be complex, and learning to store photos on a computer is a bit difficult for us technologically challenged old fogies, but it's worth the effort.

On the practical side, I don't feel any longing for times in which grabbing a quick meal meant throwing together a sandwich instead of putting something in the microwave.  Sure, microwave dinners are hardly haute cuisine, but they're a notch above peanut butter and jelly sandwiches – especially when one has had nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for several days.

The tools that we have for daily living continue to get better, making routine chores less burdensome.  Cleaning the house and doing the laundry don't exactly top my list of fun things to do, but vacuum cleaners, washers, and dryers certainly make these tasks less time-consuming and do the job better.  The only device that I've resisted in the housekeeping department is the so-called automatic dishwasher.  I just can't see how loading and unloading these machines beats washing dishes by hand.

The list goes on almost endlessly.  I begin to realize that I view the past through a prism of rose-colored memory that filters out all unpleasantness and makes bygone days seem better than they really were.  The only reality is change, which can be for the worse or for the better.

Perhaps what feeds the illusion that the past was better is our natural resistance to change.  Things change faster than we do, and we feel uncomfortable with that.  Just when we become accustomed to living a certain way, something comes along that requires us to change how we live.  The older we get, the less adaptable we become.  The longer we follow a certain way of life, the more reluctant we are to shift gears.

It is, for example, almost a legend in our household that, when the family decided we needed a computer, I loudly protested that I could see no justification for spending so much money on a machine with such limited use.  In retrospect, I realize that my resistance had more to do with fear than anything else.  I was afraid I wouldn't be able to learn how to work it.  After all, I knew how a typewriter worked, but the whole concept of electronic word processing (which, in those days, was the principal reason for owning a computer) was utterly mystifying.

Ironically, I became the primary user of the computer in our household.  Now, instead of driving everyone nuts with my resistance, I drive them crazy by going on a tear every year about how we need to upgrade the older of the two computers we have.  All that ever holds me back now is a different kind of fear – anxiety about the time-consuming and complex task of setting it up to do everything that I want it to do.

Complexification (yes, the word seems to be creeping into the language) is perhaps one of the reasons to argue that the past was better than the present.  Nobody who has wrestled with operating a new gadget, whether it's a computer or a TV set, can doubt that life used to be simpler.  However, within certain limits, the complexity of life today is one of the reasons why it is better.

When we older folks begin to hanker for "the good old days," we should perhaps look at ourselves first.  Is our yearning for the past a sign that we have become unwilling to accept the challenges of change or that we are so complacent in the old ways that, deep down, we fear change?  Are we less willing than we used to be to learn, for learning means changing?

The people of my generation whom I hang out with all spend some time talking about the old days with a certain fondness, but they fall into two camps.  Some dwell on how much better life was then and find little to like about the present.  They speak as if they had been riding the up escalator until their forties or early fifties and have been riding the down escalator ever since.  Others, though occasionally looking back over their shoulders, are still riding upward and enjoying the ride.  Somehow, despite their age, they have remained childlike – viewing the present with joy and the future with hope.  Their bodies are deteriorating, but their minds and spirits are still growing.  They don't have time to sit around lamenting "the good old days."