What differences do they see? What similarities?
Have you ever looked at the people around you and wondered what the world looked like through their eyes? Just how different is the view from yours? I often wonder about it considering how so many of us fight from one side or the other with little need of finding commonality. And yet perhaps the only way we will see the potential of today is to look at the world through the eyes of those who have seen it torn apart in those multitude of yesterdays. Perhaps then we will learn the lesson that life truly is fragile and that it will take very little to unravel what so many take for granted.
Reading the Guardian UK comments section yesterday, a potent commentary came from one Harry Leslie Smith that spoke of the foundations that we all take for granted: Is Cameron’s Britain What We Fought For In the War. I know that I listen to stories such as these from those who fought in or were affected by wars (including my own parents) with only a shallow understanding of what that world must have been like. And yet, every society around the world is indeed fighting just such a repetition today because of false ideologies. Not false as in not true, but false as in the sense of a veil shadowing our shared truths of the real world in all of its shades. Perhaps if we lived in a country such as any of the Middle East or Eastern Europe, then we would understand the words that our “teachers” are trying to convey to us all, because they have been living it through their lifetime. Circumstances do affect actions, but they also highlight what is deep within our soul. Souls can be both dark and light, as we see in so many of those who ask (or demand) that we allow them to lead us.
“To me, this brave new world feels all wrong, out of tune with what the men and women of World War Two accomplished with our “blood, sweat and tears”. It just seems too flippant, too easy, too profane in this present world;“
These words of Mr. Smith strike deeply as we all understand exactly how he feels. Indeed, there is so much that feels out of tune with the natural harmony of tranquility..of a life in balance. And we all have to take a part in this blame game that tries to force us to take sides. We fail to get the real message: Taking a side will not solve the problem, because nothing changes until we all see the same thing, no matter through whose eyes they appear, and share in the solutions. We’ve got so many problems that won’t be eradicated until we all combine our resources, our knowledge, and our passions. Because one person’s sight is like a small piece of a very large, global puzzle. And that sight not only involves the actual view, but it also requires the internal feel that accompanies the images, so that they become meaningful to the heart as well as to the mind.
We don’t pay enough attention to those who have a past. And that would be each and every one of us. But some of those pasts are more vital because they can inform us about the hazards of a repetitive future. One on which we are standing on the doorstep. And this new vision encompasses so many separators: race, religion, philosophy, and so many individualized perceptions that seek to become a single superior foundation. Those who follow just one of these separators forget one important thought, and that is that there is always more than one side to everything. And those sides which seem so different, all make up one powerful group share which we call our collective reality.
Share the story told by Harry Leslie Smith for it’s an important one that is glossed over too much with flowery words. We need to quit celebrating the past as being “glorious” and pay more attention to it as a lesson for a future that awaits our final collective decision on its course.
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