My sister and I have birthdays separated by a month and this year we decided to celebrate them by renting a cabin in the mountains. Not just any mountains, but a very special and memorable location for us.

In the 1940’s, our grandfather purchased a hunting cabin on fifty acres of land in north central Pennsylvania. My father was in his early teens and I am sure he spent many happy days of his childhood there. My grandparents would take us for the entire summer in the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s and we would spend them wandering the property, swimming in a dammed up river, fishing for trout, bass and pickerel and shooting small rodents that dared to get into our grandmother’s vegetable garden.

This was in the days of TV by antenna, and since we got no signal, we didn’t watch television, there wasn’t even one in the house. Radio signal was sketchy as well. The only handheld devices we used were utensils for eating and tools for working or crafting. I think today’s child would spontaneously combust at the thought of an entire summer with no electronic devices of any kind. Yet, I never remember being bored, ever. Life was one big adventure every day.

It has been close to forty years since our family sold the property after my grandfather’s death and I haven’t been to that part of the state in more than thirty. It was a real treat to go back and drive around, seeing the sights, visiting the scenic offerings, hiking a waterfall nature trail and reminiscing about old times. It was truly enjoyable to reconnect to a significant part of my past that has nothing but happy memories. We’ve already agreed to go back, and often.

For years, as we’ve talked together about “Fifty Acres” – the well thought out name our grandparents gave the property, and our term for that part of the world – but I have only experienced it through the eyes of my youth. Everything was wonderful, ideal and unsullied. I couldn’t imagine a better place to want to move to and live. Everything that I find to criticize or look down upon in my fast-paced busy daily reality would be resolved and removed if I could only go back there again. In returning, I anticipated going back to that special time of childhood and looked forward to picking up right where I left off.

The reality was different than I had expected! All the good things about country living were what they always were. Yes, things have modernized, there was satellite tv and wi-fi in our rented cabin. I never was much of a television person anyway, so while I appreciated the wi-fi, we never even turned the tv on!

But here’s some things that I didn’t plan on experiencing that took a little shine off of the idyllic setting of my youth:

-Beverage selections are a lot more limited than what I am used to, living in the suburbs. At one restaurant I had to go to beverage choice number four!
-Food preparation choices are not very diverse either in a town with a population of 296!
-The closest “supermarket” is nine miles away and what most of us would think of as a large 7-11.
-The closest hospital is thirty-five miles away, the closest fire station around ten miles and the nearest emergency services of any kind is five miles away. However, there is a State Police barracks just around the corner, so we might not survive an accident, but at least the crime is low!
-With the median income around the $35,000 a year mark there’s not much of a market for the kinds of goods and services we’re accustomed to passing by several times a day as we drive around in suburbia.
-Because land is inexpensive, property sizes are large and a sense of community, as we’re used to it gets lost when you have to drive to visit your “next door” neighbor.

Without question, I experienced all the relaxation I went there to find, enjoyed the beauty of a world unspoiled by human hands, the quietness, the friendliness of the locals, the cleanness of air and all the wonderful joys that we lose sight of in the day-to-day rat race of scurrying from place to place.

But I also came away with something a little more valuable; an appreciation for the daily world I do live in, with all its opportunities and conveniences. Sure, there may be too many people and too much traffic, but that also means an abundance of choices available to us. It’s so easy to complain about the things you actually have until you don’t have them, or the ability to procure them. It’s easy to forget that a large and diverse group of people that make up a huge community like mine means an abundance of entrepreneurs, businesses and corporations. That means for any good or service you want to procure, you not only have options of where to go and who to transact with, but you have the option of how you would like your good or service.

Want Mexican? Tex-Mex or Traditional? Chinese? How about Hunan, Cantonese or Szechuan? Prefer Exxon over Sunoco? Not a problem. Barbershop or hair stylist? Bring your dog to the groomer, or have them stop by in the mobile grooming van? Within three miles of my house, I have four different styles of yoga studio and several disciplines of martial arts.

We live in a wonderful time and age where if you can think it, you can create it and someone will likely value your product or service. There are opportunities for anyone who is willing to take a risk and start a business and that’s precisely because there are roughly six million of us here. Heck, we’ve got two professional football teams to root for, two MLB teams, a men’s and women’s professional basketball franchise! If you want it, we’ve got it, and if we don’t some genius will build a start up to meet the demand. Even if you just want to sit on your butt, Doordash will bring it to you, so will Amazon and even Wal-Mart and Safeway will deliver your goods to your door.

It’s common to romanticize the past, the “good old days”, when times were simpler, people were nicer and the world moved slower. It’s easy to look at our fast-paced and over busy society and find fault. It’s easy to blame social media, 24/7 news cycles and partisan politics for the ills and woes of today and look back to the past and say it was better then. To that, I say look at all the opportunities that I’ve just mentioned. Add to that choices in education, child care, elder care, golf courses, community centers, fitness facilities…the list could go on and on. Simpler does not always mean better, and some elements of it were worse when people couldn’t access the good, service or care they needed because it wasn’t readily available.

There is no question that some of the good of those times have been lost as society has gotten faster and more interconnected. It seems to me we’ve stopped seeing the individuals we deal with as we rush off to handle the next crisis in our busy days. To that, I say we can choose to slow down a little and take the time to connect with the people we buy from and sell to. That’s what individuals are, after all. We can purpose to become more human with each other, acting with a little more grace and care for each other. We can, and should, bring together the best of both of these worlds. A smile is easy. So is asking someone’s name or taking just an extra minute to make that human connection. Remember please and thank you? It’s become a lost art, but I’m bringing it back!

It was great to actually get away from it all and just stop for a while and breathe. Not have to be somewhere, see someone, do something and all by five pm. But I ask myself, why do I have to go away to experience the benefits of that? Why can’t I experience it getting back to it all also? No matter how many items I scratch off my to-do list, tomorrow is going to add back just as many. I’m convinced if you don’t have anything on your to-do list, you’re likely dead. Comatose at the very least. Busy-ness and connectedness don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

I’m going to take the positives of the idyllic world of my past and bring those things into today. I’m going to be the change I want to see in my world. It will cost me nothing but a little of my time. I saw a quote today by a lady named Cheryl Strayed. She said we’re all becoming who we are going to be, so we might as well not be jerks.

Right on.