It occurred to me this week that in the old days, when things did not change so fast and there weren't so many people, and so there was not the same need for endless development, you could stand on a piece of land in mid-life, on which you had stood as a kid, and on which you have stood every day since then, and look out, and it would be the same.
And that permanence in the LAND would have given you a different view of life. A view of life in which cycles of seasonal change went on, but basically the world endured. And I think this permanence would have been a comfort.
Now I go to the places that I loved and took solace and strength from when I was younger, and they have been touristified and pathed over, with explanatory plaques and souvenir vendors, or they have been razed and built on.
The LAND is disappearing. The world population has DOUBLED since I was born, and I feel this nostalgia for the passing of calm and silence and small-scale life, and for a time when things did not require continual adjustment at such a pace.
Some things are good as they are, they function well and do not need to be replaced or improved. It's a relief to find things as they were, unchanged, old friends softened by time and use.
I long for respite from the continual murder of the simple and quiet. I scour around in my mind for where peace and permanence might be found, but there are people and buildings and roads everywhere that I know now, and I feel a panic at the thought of the 3B more who will arrive by the time I am 80, tripling the population since the 3B it was when I was born.
Already all the bustle overwhelms me. Moving somewhere unspoiled simply invites a repitition of that experience of seeing the houses begin to sprawl over it. There is no solution, no grace to be found.
4 comments:
The times have changed, and it is very sad...
Dear Rachael,
I have the same feeling, often. It is such a mix of both loving my fellow man, and not wanting him to make so many damn babies! Or Her.
I get the urge, sometimes, to move to the point of land furthest from any pending sprawl. But, then, I think the solace would turn to solitude, would turn to isolation.
For me, I think the reality is that there exists a relationship between the nurturing I receive from relationships, and the nurturing I receive from Nature. The more I have of one, the less sensitive I am to the other (or its scarcity). But that's just me. Whether or not I'm comfortable in this Global situation is independent of the harsh realities of population growth. I'm not trying to make it ok by saying I can learn to be ok with it.
Nothing I say can make it better, can it? But you are not alone in this feeling; I think you express it where most people give a little sigh and forget the origin of the uncomfortable feeling that remains in them. Working as much as people do, few can remember how they accumulated all the feelings they have.
Blog on, Rachael!!!
- Chad
Post a Comment