Walk through the mall today and you may feel transported back to the sixties. The shops are selling macramé belts and handbags, leather bracelets, dangle earrings in the shape of peace signs and lava lamps.

The young people who pass by you could have gone to high school or college with you. Suddenly, you feel as you haven’t for years – comfortable in a world of the familiar. Tie-dye shirts and platform shoes are everywhere. Gone are the shaven-head convict hairstyles of the last few years. The young men passing you have left their locks gloriously unshorn.

Even haute couture has reached its fingers back into time for this year’s fashion trends with the trapeze dress, the swing coat and the poncho coming back into style. It is just as it was then, when you were coming of age in the late sixties and early seventies. The designers went mod, the boutiques went hippie and you got to wear some of both.

What’s missing is something intangible, a feeling or perhaps an attitude. These kids are engaging in fashion trends whereas the hippies were engaging in a movement of anti-fashion.

No matter, times change. The world changes and what we perceive to be our role in it changes along with both the world and our age. Maturity brings a different perspective than we had when we were young. Then full of hope and energy, we were ready to take on the establishment and change the world for the better.

We were going home to lock ourselves in our rooms and listen to the music that made our parents cringe on turntables that spun 12″ vinyl records. They are listening to music that makes their parents cringe on portable MP3 players and IPods as they stroll through the mall.

Maybe it isn’t really all that different. We were concerned about the environment and nuclear proliferation and war in a far-off land. They live under the cloud of reports of global warming, rogue states with nuclear capabilities and war in a far-off land.

I, for one, am just glad to see the world looking familiar again.