after a hellish week at work, I’m back…
as I work in a grocery store, we sell a lot of stuff and
of late, we have been selling a lot of Jewish Passover
material… as I am not Jewish, I don’t really know what
the various items are for… for example, challah bread and
Gefilte fish and Matzo… so I was thinking about this…
this Jewish, (and the Jews by no means are the only ones who do this,
they are just an example, I could have picked any number of groups for this example)
Jewish tradition is just one example of people who have traditions that reach
far into the past and give the present a sense of continuity… a link to the past
that make people feel safe and secure…this linkage from past to present then
with the young ones, also links the past to the future…traditional ceremonies
that link us firmly with our forefathers is a very human trait… it is almost a
safety net…and yet the problem becomes, as with any safety net,
it becomes a crutch… one depends on the past far too much and
it that prevents one from looking forward… this is the position of
the conservative… far too much dependence on the past and not enough
looking forward… the conservative would argue the opposite, that the
liberal spends too much time in the future and not enough time in the
past… but the past is the past and that means done and over with…
however with traditions like Passover and Christmas… we firmly
hold with the past, to the past and the question becomes simply this…
as we should hold to the past but we must commit to the future…
what guide should we use to know when we must use the past as
a guide or as a link and when should we look forward to the future…
it becomes a question of knowing when to look back and when to
look forward… the answer to whether to look past or forward
comes from the simple answer of having a flexible and adaptable
vision of who and what we are… in other words… when the situation
calls for it, we look back and when the situation calls for it, we look
forward and this requires us to have flexible and adaptable
ism’s and ideologies… in other words, we can’t have rigid and
inflexible ideologies… we can’t say, this is reality and
this is how we deal with this reality… as if one fixed viewpoint
of reality fits all reality… there is no absolute standard and
we must adapt to changing situations with a changing and adaptable
viewpoints of the universe… we get locked into thinking there
is but one way and one way only to approach how we are to live
our lives and there is not one way and one way only… there is a
multitudes of ways we can approach how to live and multitude
of ways to becoming more human… the idea there is but
one road becomes a trap because the one road has only
one way to go into the future whereas we must be able to travel
many different roads to reach the desired destination…
this is real strength… being able to find a new road when
finding a new road is called for… and when it is called for,
sticking on the old road may be the best path…
but one must be adaptable to understand this… the path
to god doesn’t need to be with traditional ceremonies like
Sabbath and Passover… the path to god may be another road…
and the path to becoming more human may requires us to
change paths in mid course and we must be adaptable enough
to see this… we get too locked in sometimes and think the
road has only one path into the future and from the past has
only one road leading to the present… but many roads are possible
and we have to become flexible enough to see this…
but becoming flexible and adaptable means we must rethink
what it means to be human and we need to rethink what it
means into the future …
Kropotkin