I did something this past week that I never expected to find myself doing. During a normal conversation, it was brought up how things used to be.

Specifically, the “I remember” was when a quarter pounder meal was $2.98, and buying gas for $.24 a gallon when I was in high school. I never anticipated telling those stories and dating myself in such a manner, which has now got me thinking. I vividly remember the fifth-grade project in which I had to interview an individual from a different generation, and I chose to interview my great-grandparents.

My great grandmother was in her 90s at the time, and she told of living on the Nebraska Plains and teaching the Native Americans on the Omaha reservation before coming to Illinois. We talked about life before vehicles, before the landing on the moon and how different life was.

My great grandfather, who lived to be 100 years old, came to this country from Norway with his brother near the turn of the century. Unfortunately, his brother passed away after having surgery on the boat on the way here. Before coming to Rochelle and farming, he was a policeman in Stavanger, Norway, and in Omaha, Nebraska.

You are probably asking yourself, why do I bring all this up? For me, it relates to what has changed today, what has changed with the current generation and why society is not the way it used to be. One of the significant lessons I learned from those past generations comes back to a fundamental element of society, which is accountability for your actions — being accountable for the words you say, being accountable for the actions you take and doing them for the right reasons.

Accountability is nearly non-existent today, except for one constant. The buzzword has been holding police accountable, which I am completely in favor of, but what about the rest of society?

What about other professions and their bad actors? What about individuals that law enforcement interacts with? Are they being held accountable? Are these ever-growing crimes we see on the news the result of prosecutors not holding people accountable? Is the judiciary not holding people accountable?  Why are we seeing record crime numbers even with all of the reform?

While the answer appears to be very simple, the days of the past have certainly changed; our direction as a country has changed because of a lack of accountability. We see the lack of accountability on social media, we see it in the mainstream news and it's unfortunate because I would love for future generations in my family to grow up and live in a society with which I've benefitted and lived.

Do not let others be the only impact your children learn from today. Impactful mentoring can start or end with you. We all need to be teachers and not just cheering from the stands.  ​

Brian VanVickle is the Sheriff of Ogle County.