Pronto-Fast Food Place

Pronto-Fast Food Place: Tokyo 5/21/10

Mickey Glantz

“Yesterdays Are As Important As Tomorrows”

When I was in Tokyo in May, I was having coffee one morning at Pronto’s, a breakfast-lunch place. I chose to sit at the counter. The place was filled with smokers … and smoke. The door to Pronto’s was wide open but it did not help to draw the smoke to the outside. Interesting was the fact that next to the stack of food trays was a stack of ashtrays. Smoking is alive and well in Tokyo.

Music was playing in the background. The Beatles’ song “Yesterday” began to play. Beatles songs make my mind wander back to when they were still playing together, and to when I was lots younger than I am now. The song got me to thinking about the value of past history as well as memory. I realized that our “yesterdays” are as important as our “tomorrows”, but for different reasons.

Yesterdays are important, because they provide us with clues to who we are, that is, what we’ve become, and why we are who we are. I don’t often dwell on the past, but it’s there in my deep memory; sometimes thoughts of the past emerge in times of a hidden psychological need.

As a professor, I try to teach my students that “history has a future” and that we need to know about history in order to prepare for and better cope with an uncertain future. I encourage them to read original writings of past decades (not necessarily the classics) to get a better idea of where issues, problems and solutions to them have come from.

However, today’s societies are in a fast-forward mode, not taking the time to look back and in many cases not valuing traditional or existing ways of doing things. For example, in its rush to modernize, China has been tearing down its past in order to rebuild a future. It has destroyed older parts of its major cities with apparent little regard for the consequences for the displaced population or for the adverse impacts on its culture in the future. To be both modern and to be Chinese will be a challenge. As in many communities seeking to industrialize and develop economically, westernization has been confused with industrialization. The King of Bhutan struck out on a different path. He created the “happiness index” to counterbalance the concept of the GNP (Gross National Product) as a symbol of a nation’s prosperity. The not so subtle message was that you don’t have to be rich and western in culture to be happy. Tradition has value. Aesthetic aspects of a pristine environment have value. Wildlife has value, and so forth. Not all change is beneficial or yielding of positive outcomes for individuals or societies. History has value and it must not be lost as a result of change for the sake of change. There is a saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Well that may apply in politics and in economics but it is certainly not valid when it comes to culture and to a human need for a sense of belonging.

If we fail to pay attention to our past histories (as countries) or to our memories (as individuals), we will be entering an uncertain future exposed and unarmed with effective coping mechanisms.