The River Has Become a Train!
In my younger years I saw our human life like a drop of water that falls into a fast flowing river.
The river is the culture into which you are born.
Cultures are not stagnant in the same way that time is always moving.
They are complex ongoing bodies of organised thoughts; behaviours; commerce etc.
So that river we fall into is already moving quite fast.
By that I mean that our societies are ongoing moving sets of structures and processes which require people to act in certain ways to fit in.
After you fall or are born; you are surrounded by the other drops of water which are your immediate family who are in turn surrounded by the rest of your particular society.
And instantly; you are moving along in a life that you did not design!
Life is already there with buildings; transport and economies in place and we simply drop into the current timeline.
And every drop of water born is immediately swept along by the world into which it falls!
Every culture has its own ways; its economic reality; its ideas about life; its foods, its beliefs about our existence; its moral structure, etc.
It is rare if not impossible; that a human can avoid this immersion into a reality and the effects of that reality upon them.
Yet, if we travel around this world or even look at it through the window of our media; it is impossible to not see that the drops of water in other cultures are looking at reality through a different lens.
At the same time; it is difficult for us to not feel as if our own way of life is more normal.
More right.
And the way others live is a little strange if not outright wrong!
My mother used to say to me as a child, “All the world is strange except thee and me; but sometimes I worry about thee as well.”
Personally I have found it beneficial to climb onto the river bank to get a better picture of the river into which I have fallen.
It is good to take a quiet moment to watch and reflect -
to watch the thoughts and feelings that my own river gave me
- and to compare and wonder at the way other cultures look at their reality!
It is disappointing for me to see so few other people sitting on their various river banks because being able to separate yourself from your own personal river gives you a bigger perspective of life and a chance to develop compassion for your fellow man.
The idea that our way is “right” is an interesting concept.
The way that some humans use a deity to justify their “rightness” is even more fascinating.
Did God really make man so that he could punish him if he didn't work out the “right” way to worship “him”?
Would God punish a man who is born in the middle of the jungle away from the ideas of Islam or Christianity for not knowing these ideas?
Would God punish a man whose culture has taught him the wrong ideas?
Has God set up life with thousands of traps just so fallible humans can trip and fall?
These days it feels to me as if that river of life into which we all fall is more like an express train going downhill!
Modern society has become so complex and speedy that the ability to step outside of it is even more difficult.
The time and space for that quiet moment has become harder to find!
We are bombarded by media from every direction and that media carries beliefs and values.
And the nature of our reality is more like wet concrete than water.
Of course wet concrete solidifies and the humans caught in it become fixed and set in their ways.
Yet!
There is a choice here for you the viewer! And that choice can be encapsulated in 4 words -
Fixed or flexible mind?
Questioning or accepting reality?
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