Tuesday, February 9, 2016

We Can't Go Back to the Past

We can't go back into the past, writes the Peace Weekly journalist, in Word and Silence, and contemplates the beautiful picture of the earth taken from the  Apollo 17 trip to the moon that appears  like a precious jewel: blue marble. Difficult to image the wars, hunger, pain and sorrow that continue to exist on this beautiful planet earth, he laments.

Is our life that beautiful? Many look back into the past with fond memories. We forget the pain and the difficulties, for suddenly they are healed. We look back with the eyes of a poet.

The curtain has dropped on the  drama of the 1980s. Nostalgia remains for much of the styles of dress, cosmetics, songs, etc..  In 1988, we had the Olympics, also the beginning of the Peace Weekly newspaper. How did we live at that time? Was it a time we want to see returned? In recent years, we have had many movies and dramas that bring back to us those years: television series on life in those years, young peoples' dreams, romance and close family bonds.... 

The future appears  as a cold biting wind, a serious depression, and many entering a gloomy tunnel. Young people see it as 'Hell Chosun''; young people half joking, see life  being destroyed, and fathers of families are hiding their tears in being asked to voluntarily put in for early retirement.

People who are suffering from the cold are looking for the warm spot on the floor. When did we have the warm spot on the floor? Are we able to return to the times when as children, we went fishing?  No, this is impossible.  Going back to memories is no more than seeing a mirage. Nostalgia is only temporary. We have to find the answers in the present. In these barren times, we have to make the roads and dig the wells today. Tomorrow we begin Lent, a time of  renewal and living each day more fully.  

"Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert,  I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers"  (Isaiah  43:18-19).