Our generation was closer, more honest, more human… and truly happy. With each passing year, I become more convinced that the world I grew up in is gone forever.
I’m getting older. My generation is fading away, and with it goes that spirit of unity that once made our lives authentic, meaningful, and collectively driven.
These days, I turn on the TV and see the same story: floods, broken roads, littered streets, chaos. And constant blame – it’s always the government, the officials, the businessmen at fault, never the people themselves.
I look at the young and realize – something went wrong. They complain, demand, protest. But we, in our time, just got on with it.
We built the country with our own hands. My generation lived through the post-war years, a time of great construction. We didn’t sit in offices, write complaints, or demand compensation. We raised the country from the ruins, built it the best we could, because we believed – we were doing it for ourselves, for our children.
We built roads, tunnels, bridges. We erected factories, worked in fields, created a reservoir system that sustained agriculture. And we didn’t just build – we took care of everything.
I grew up in a village by a river. We knew that if we didn’t watch the banks, the spring floods could overflow and flood our homes.
But no one waited for the “specialists” to come. In spring and autumn, the whole village gathered. We cleared the riverbed, removed blockages, cut down old trees that could obstruct water flow.
No one demanded money. No one waited for orders from “above.”
And after the work – we spread blankets on the grass, pulled out food from our bags, and shared with each other. In the evening, someone would bring an accordion, and the whole village would sing.
We were one family.
Today people have changed. Now no one wants to take responsibility for their own life. I see young men, strong and healthy, whining on social media about a collapsed bridge or a burst pipe outside their window, writing to the council, and getting silence in return.
And I want to ask: “What have you done?”
Why didn’t you gather your neighbors, come out, clean, strengthen, repair? Why are you waiting for someone else to come and solve your problems?
I don’t excuse the authorities. They have plenty of faults – they’ve forgotten their job isn’t just to sit in offices and make promises.
But people have changed too.
Today, everyone is for themselves.
Some make money off whatever they can, sell land that fed generations, drain water from reservoirs for their own gain.
And when disaster strikes, they shrug: “What could we have done?”
I’m proud of my generation. I know we’re called “old.” That people laugh at our habits, our resilience.
But you know what?
I’m proud of how we lived.
Proud that we knew what work meant.
That we didn’t hide behind others, but tackled problems ourselves.
We didn’t wait for government aid – we built our lives with our own hands.
We were united. Authentic.
Honest.
Human.
We lived, not just existed.
And we were happy.
