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).
