Sometimes I think that perhaps life is harder now, than it used to be.
Back then there was no real medicine, no hope, the same back-breaking work every day. Heavily restricting ideologies, terrible inhumane practices, unimaginable injustices. Life was hard.
Now there’s amazing technology, less work, better medicine, freedom to choose, freedom to think, a study of the ideologies not just of our own culture but other people’s as well. Knowledge, education, a longer life span.
And uncertainty. Hope. The thought that if we work hard enough, if we look good enough, if we are talented enough, we can be whatever we want to be.
Honestly I think that’s harder than the old ways.Physical labor is easier than psychological suffering.
When all you knew was that you worked, you married, you had children, and then you died, life was simple.
Now there’s you work or you study or you have a family. You have politics. You have aspirations and hopes of betterment, of more money, of greater prestige. There’s such a thing as the wrong time to have children, the wrong time to get married, hell, there’s even the decision whether to get married or have children. Settling down in the wrong job, the wrong relationship, the wrong life-changing decision breeds not only disappointment in others but also contempt of yourself.
Is all this choice good for us? The choices are great when they turn out positively. When they don’t, they’re disasters, labels and histories placed on us like some great cross to bear.
We hate our ability to choose, but we would never give it up, because now we don’t know how to function without it. We hate ourselves for our decisions, but we hate those who decide for us more. We fight to the death for the freedom to choose, butbury ourselves in prejudice and xenophobia against those who have chosen differently. No longer can we say “it is as it is”, because we make it as it is.
All human beings are children, and like runaways, we hate the responsibility we gave ourselves.
The only problem now is that we can’t turn back. We’ve run so far from home that even if we decided to return to the care and control of what was, we wouldn’t know where we belonged.
We are all babes lost in the woods, too stubborn to admit it, and too scared to embrace it.
Nelkitty 