Wednesday's Words for May 24, 2017

I think I’m at that place I never believed I would ever be: feeling a little as if the world is moving too fast for me and leaving me confused and unsettled as a result. The changes in technology notwithstanding, up until last November, I really thought I was doing all right—for an older broad.

I don’t try to keep up with every bit of technology as it evolves. That would really be futile, because whether I like it or not, the truth is that as we age, our reactions and thinking processes do slow down some. It’s normal. Maybe if the natural life span for human beings could aspire to two centuries instead of only one, then things might be different and I might just now be coming into my prime. But they’re not, and I’m not. When you couple being over sixty with the reality that my health is not the very best, well, it’s only to be expected that I begin to react as if I’m…older.

That said, I haven’t focused so much on the visual arts, or on all the cool apps a person can get for their smart phone, though I do have the ones I want, and have learned to use them. I focused instead on the skills needed to serve my vocation, writing. I have a lap top for travel, and a pc at home here, with a tower, a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. I have a wireless printer beside me, and my Internet access is also wireless. I have a cell phone that I use to text, to call, and to play a game or two while I’m waiting at the doctor’s office. My cell phone is also my alarm clock and my camera, and I can take pictures that then get loaded onto my computer. I can even send these pictures to friends, or post them on Face Book. I’ve also got my banking app on my phone, though seriously, I’d rather not use it. I much prefer using my desktop for that.

We have a wonderful television we got just a few years ago that can be used to connect to the Internet, but no, that’s too much for me and we don’t use it for that, in any event. Actually, the entire television is too much for me. Fortunately, Mr. Ashbury is quite adept at using it. And since I can operate it sufficiently to tune in breaking news during the day, or to replay a recorded program in the early afternoon when I am having my “legs up” time, I’m content. We won’t talk about the blue ray DVD. Yeah, my daughter is going to have to come by and show me how to use that thing, all over again.

But despite all that, which I consider normal and acceptable, more and more I’m feeling as if this world is just moving too fast for me, and for once it’s not the technological changes that are the cause of this sense, but the societal ones. And maybe it’s not too fast, so much as life seems to be moving entirely in the wrong direction.

I have to tell you, I didn’t see these changes coming. In fact, a year ago I would have sworn—no, I did swear—that it would never happen. Such a large number of the people on my continent would not choose lying over honesty, meanness over fairness and compassion, xenophobia over intellectual curiosity, or hatred over love.

I never thought it would happen and yet I see this happening all around me, and I’m completely at sea. It’s almost as if all the morality, all the truth, with which I was raised, with which we all were raised, has been erased from the collective consciousness of human kind. And yet, as I think on it, I begin to wonder. Am I really being lost in these changes…or is my vision simply being skewed by smoke and mirrors?

As a teenager growing up in the 60s and 70s of the last century, I was taught to examine what was presented for my consumption against a set of tenets I needed to decide upon and then adopt as my own, in order to judge whether or not I was being sold—well, snake oil. As a child, I was taught that there were certain immutable moral laws by which we humans lived. Those morals didn’t change based on circumstances or time, or anything else. They held fast, were solid, and could not be brushed aside ever. In other words, as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be. Yes, there are truths that fall into that category—etched in stone.

Since the dawn of time, human kind has known that there are two great forces struggling for domination over the hearts and minds of the people: good and evil. And the truth is, that while evil may get ahead for a time, and even seem to be winning, there is one thing evil is simply not capable of doing: and that is becoming the good.

In this struggle, Good will never use evil in order to win. Anyone who thinks that it will, has been seduced by the evil. Think about that for a moment, because there are some truths in the universe, and that is one. Evil is evil, period. Lying is lying, period. Hate is hate, and racism is racism, period. And Good will never use evil in order to win.

Evil, on the other hand, has no such restrictions.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury