Schizophrenic post coming right up!
Are we doomed to repeat the sins of our fathers? The future is built on the past, but is it also bound by it?
The optimistic parts of my fractured personality believe strongly in our power to change. Even small steps in the right direction send ripples through what Luke would call The Force. While The Force is undeniably a work of fiction, it has a resonance with us. All life
is bound together in a sense. The individual human mind is ridiculously complex, and the interactions and influences between them even more so. Much like particles in a gas, predicting the path of any one life is pretty much impossible, even if larger groups demonstrate predictable behaviours most of the time (if you ignore individual behaviour and look only at the group).
The current election process in the US is fascinating because Obama is a fairly unconventional candidate. He's staking a lot not only on his own ability to precipitate change, but also on the electorate's willingness to accept their own role in the situation they're in. Even if it's just fancy speeches and rhetoric, it's interesting rhetoric. Accepting personal and collective responsibility for the failures of the past is a hard thing to do, but is fundamental to real change. Obama, I think, understands this, but I'm not sure the electorate really do. We'd all much prefer to vote for a magic wand, as if simply electing a new government will fix all that we perceive to be wrong with society. It's so much easier to hope that the difficult choices we'll have to make start and end with which box to place your "x" next to on election day. And then we can carry on with our lives, insulated by ignorance from the rest of the world while someone else fixes all our problems.
While governments and presidents undoubtedly wield a lot of power, fundamental change happens elsewhere, they simply get to set the tone. Real change demands that we each see the world for what it is, stripped of our prejudices and comforting over simplifications. It requires that we each take the decision to leave our comfortable ruts (even if we hate the rut, it's got a reassuring familiarity) and step out into the unknown. And that is
hard!
Of course, it's all very well me preaching change. I've got more than my own share of comfortable ruts I find it next to impossible to leave. I step out every now a then, when some carrot is offered up by life, but it's painful. It's stepping outside in winter with only your dressing gown on. Every second, every aspect of your being reminds you that this place is uncomfortable, and asks if it wouldn't be a good idea to go back inside.
So far this year I've spent a lot of time shivering in the cold, and my life feels ridiculously out of control as a result. But I need to be here, I need shift my perspectives and carve myself a new rut in a slightly better place. I don't know if I'll succeed, how much longer I'll successfully fight the urge to go back inside and hide, but I'm not ready to go back in just yet.
Change is possible. It's hard, and it's risky, and repeating the problems of our past usually comes with a handy bunch of excuses to ease our guilt. Failure to try, however, is the worst sort of failure. And one I've been all too guilty of.
