Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
W. Churchill
Sometimes we get tired of the old. We get bored and yearn for something new and different. We get restless and want change. So we decide to get rid of everything we are used to and try something completely new and different. We want to create a whole new world, and the only way to do that is to destroy the old one. But we are overzealous and we throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. The problem with completely destroying the old world is that there are many parts of it that are very useful to us and we need to keep.
The truth is that our lives must be a balance of the new and the old. We need traditions and routines to keep us grounded with a sense of who we are as part of a group. We can't handle too much change at once; we get anxious and feel like our world is out of control. Yet we can't handle too much security at once either, because then we become stagnant and dull, and bored. We need both. We need to save the best parts of our old world, those traditions and routines we find very meaningful, and at the same time embrace new changes and challenges to renew our interest in life.
Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old. Decide what parts of your present world mean the most to you. There are family traditions and cultural traditions worth saving. There is old wisdom that can be used in dealing with a new world, and that should be saved too. It is certainly not true that "primitive" wisdom is of no use in a modern world. We can never completely predict what will happen so we can never know what knowledge is going to come in handy to deal with a new situation. Save what is left of your old world because it can help you in building the new one.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
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