Change
... families, nation against nation, are justified because it is the way it has always been. Tradition. What gravity indeed does that word impart. What power it wields. As it roots us and grounds us and gives us hope for who we are because of who we were, so it also wreaks destruction and denies change. I would never pretend another person or people well enough to demand that they change their traditions, yet how foolish it seems to me to hold fast and unyieldingly to those ways without regard for any changes that have taken place in the world about us. For that world is a changing place, moved by advancements is all aspects of life, by the rise and fall of populations, and the blending of race. The world is not static, and if the roots of our perceptions, traditions, hold static, then we are doomed, I say, into destructive dogma. Then we fall upon the darker blade of that double-edged sword. I see often one desire in people my own age, whether in be in conversations with them, or in the expression on their faces. Everyone wants to find a world they once knew. On the surface that seems a reasonable desire enough. To right a wrong, to know what other life we’d have lead, to go back to before everything. Everybody wants to go back, and there are many good reasons why they should, good reasons for us all to go back. But, I’ve come to realise, is there one reason why we should not, and if that reason, nostalgia, is source of our desires, then I fear we’ll all be bitterly disappointed. In my experience, nostalgia is possibly the greatest of lies we tell ourselves. We gloss the past to fit the sensibilities of the present. For some, it brings a measure of comfort, a sense of self and of source, but many others, like I once did, take these altered memories too far, and because of that, paralyse themselves to the realities about them. How many people long for that “past, simpler, and better world” I wonder, without ever recognising the truth, that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, not the world about them? I, too, remember that idealism and energy of my younger past, when the world seemed uncomplicated, when right and wrong where plainly written before my path in life. Maybe, in a strange sort of way, because of the fact that my early years were so full of terrible experiences and events I simply could not tolerate, I am better off now. Unlike for so many of those I have met, my life has steadily improved. Has that contributed to my optimism, for my own life and the world I live in? To put it simply, wouldn’t the poorest person want change, whether it is in society or people, if it lead to a better life for their children? That would seem logical, but I have seen that this is not the case. For many of us, who have passed their strongest a...