January 17, 2024
Like a lot of people, I sometimes
feel those thoughts forming in the back of my mind. You know the ones I mean. “Why,
when I was younger, …”; or “Well, back in my day we didn’t…”; or “I remember
how it was, those were good old days…”
The problem with allowing
those thoughts to take hold of you is that they’re inevitably followed by
another, possibly dangerous one. “This is all just so confusing. I wish we
could go back to the way things used to be.”
I had the recent thought that
the reason so many people feel that way could very well be, that the times they’re
recalling occurred at some point in their childhoods. Trust me, that is a common
thought that most people think from time to time. How do I know this? Well, if
it weren’t so, the meme with the caption, “I don’t feel like adulting today”
would not be so popular.
Many people have that
nostalgic wish for a happier, easier time. The problem arises when that wish
becomes central to your way of thinking. Because once you let that thought take
possession of your soul, you can begin to slide down a slope of substituting what
is fantasy for what is real.
People who are caught up in
this fantasy reality are good people, for the most part. But they’re also
people who feel out of place in life. Feeling out of place can make a person
look for something – anything – that will make them feel more comfortable,
something that they can understand and hold onto. Something that will make them
feel as if they belong.
Sadly, there are deeply
unscrupulous folks out there who will promise those seeking souls anything and
then use their bartered loyalty for ill.
But you know what? I don’t
believe that’s anything new in the human experience. We’ve had false prophets
since the day we were warned about them in the Bible. As for the pall we feel
in our spirits from time to time? That recognizable quote, “These are the times
that try men’s souls” was not written in this century. It wasn’t even written
in the previous one or the one before that. It was written in 1776 by Thomas
Paine.
I believe that it’s inevitable
for folks to feel a little out of place in their lives. To feel as if the world
is spinning out of control, sometimes. For those of us who are older, that
sense can come from no longer being out there in the world, working and doing.
As one ages, one’s capacity to think and do and learn can slow down. In our
golden years, we tend to relax more (maybe because we tire more easily?). I no
longer find I can learn things as quickly as I used to. I still want to
learn new things, but it is a slower process.
I know damn well, for example,
when I watch an interesting video about something I didn’t know anything about,
that I likely won’t retain a lot of it, if I only see that video once.
The principal difference
between our past experiences as a civilization and our present one is that here
in the present we’re no longer only living in our own communities, in our own
village, if you will. We have social media, and so while, say, in the early
1900s your village may only have had one idiot you were subjected to hearing
from, today in the 2020s you get to hear from every village idiot in the whole
damn world!
I don’t know what the solution
to this dilemma is, but whatever we discover it to be, I’m quite certain that
one ingredient will be kindness.
We need to treat people,
always, with kindness and respect. We all have family and friends who get
carried away by different ideas, and some who fall prey to conspiracy theories.
It can be hard to spend time with these people, and friends? They will likely
never “listen to reason”. But they will respond to your kindness.
And really, they’re the people
who may need our kindness the most. Especially if the ones they look up to as
being the holder of the answers to all of their problems lose their sheep’s
clothing, revealing the wolves they truly are within. When—not if—that day
comes, there will be a lot of disillusioned folks out there.
And we can handle that—hell, I
believe we can handle most things—if we remember to treat everyone with kindness
and respect.
Love,
Morgan
https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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