Things to get better, worse in years ahead

Here it is August, 2010 already. We’re one year older than in August, 2009 and there are a few other significant factors.

Hurricane season is already almost two months old and we’ve escaped any direct hits. The first possibility by-passed to the south and the second fizzled out before it got here.

Schools are ringing their bells again and family life is getting back to household duties without so many interruptions from recreation activities on the baseball and soccer fields.

Of course, the Saints are beginning to march in again and their activities are getting a lot of headlines. And soon, Hahnville and Destrehan football teams will be taking the fields to demand the attention of St. Charles Parish residents.

Life is transient, month after month. As we grow older, whether we’re young or old, we are changing our patterns of life. At first, we’re exuberant, playful, inquisitive. Then we become thoughtful, wondrous, learnful. Then we are complacent but still inquisitive, social, informative. And in later life, we admit that the years ahead, and those behind, are all very important.

Who else can tell the world what experience can tell them? Who else can say that they can best advise on future courses of living based on what developed in the past? And who will believe them?

The problem is that today’s world is so much better informed than in latter years. At the flick of a button, the internet can best give us answers to questions that only volumes of encyclopedias partially did back in the old days.

Our school systems are more crowded today but the new information they have should certainly increase the amount of learning that can be acquired.

Of course, we can all be glad it’s not August, 1011. But if it were, we would be in the same frame of mind. Things get better as the years go on – – and in some respects they get worse.

Let us be thankful that whenever we are, we can find good and bad for the years ahead. It’s not a dead-end street.