Change needs time

Did you know every issue of the Eastside News (and East Side News) is archived at the Wisconsin Historical Society? As we approached the 100th anniversary of this uber-local, bimonthly paper, we pored through copies of the old issues. Not surprisingly, we were struck by how much things have changed.
I kept thinking about those changes through the lens of today’s culture wars. The way things used to be is often lifted up as the good old days. But that doesn’t seem like it honors the whole truth — so many things have changed over the last 100 years. Our world is constantly changing. And I think that’s often a good thing.
The historic ads included here illustrate just a few changes in the way we live. Women don’t wear corsets anymore (Phew!). We have refrigerators, not ice boxes (Yay!). In 1941, Oscar Mayer signed off ads with “In War and in Peace, Meat is Essential,” but since then, people have discovered the joy of meatless meals. And we don’t get our milk delivered by the local dairy at all — much less by a horse-drawn wagon.
My father-in-law liked to say, “Progress follows the hearse.” And he’d laugh. I know there’s truth in that, but isn’t it good when we allow ourselves to be open to change — during our lifetime? Change is one of the ways we grow. Sometimes it happens by choice, sometimes because we are challenged to consider something outside our own life experience. Or just learn something new.
I’ve seen so many changes in my lifetime — an increasing acceptance of gay and nonbinary people, same-sex marriage, women working outside the home, single parenthood, the ongoing expansion of civil rights, interracial marriage, legal marijuana in places. We elected a Black president. Tatoos are mainstream. Social media has changed how we get our news. We no longer get dressed up to fly. Dads are doing more housework and child care. Moms are working outside the home. And then there are smartphones, Alexa, the internet and the countless ways technology has changed our lives. It can make your head spin.
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
As I think back on all the changes I’ve seen in my lifetime, I realize change benefits from time. When the first cars were introduced, there were people who were afraid to ride in them. With time, we clearly got over that. For generations, women were excluded from the sciences. In recent years women have won Nobel Prizes in science for discovering a vaccine to combat COVID-19, how to grow human bone and how to grow coral so we can restore coral reefs damaged by climate changes — to name just a few.
Cultural changes can start off feeling uncomfortable. I can imagine that someone raised in a conservative, religious home or any guy who absorbed the homophobic messages of toxic masculinity might initially feel uncomfortable around gay public displays of affection. They’ve been taught that. But feeling uncomfortable with something doesn’t translate to it being wrong. It’s just a feeling. A feeling that can change with new knowledge, with meeting people whose life experience is different from our own.
I’m not suggesting all change is good. Far from it. But it does behoove us to be mindful of our responses to it. Exercising our change muscles can help us become stronger — as individuals and as a community — more compassionate, flexible and resilient. And we’re going to need that.
Submitted by Kristin Groth