On the road less travelled
We always presume the other path would have been better. As we get older, we regret our mistakes, opportunities not taken, wrong turns...
We come to a crossroad and it is the time to make another decision.
Some people prefer busy roads and follow the crowd on the road predestined for them...
Some people, especially young generation like to forge their own path...often they choose the road less travelled full of obstacles and hardship...
The road to acceptance...Have you been on this road? Do you have a decision or choice you regret? How do you deal with it?
I always admired idealists and later realised that every shooting star of idealism has its own dark matter from which it draws its energy.
Some people can absent themselves from real life for their art more easily. Some of us are anchored into the quotidian business of everyday life.
I admire idealists, but they are usually enabled by someone who holds the tether on their ballon, who pays the bills and sweeps up after them.
And yet, in everyone of us is hidden an idealist who believes in better world.
As an educator I believe the most unconscious biases we encounter every day in our lives can be overcome through education.
I have read recently about a young Asian student living in Europe in 1660. A young man taken out of his traditional culture, with all the fear and dislocation that entails.
In 1660 you are much closer to the medieval mind than the Enlightenment with a whole other level of superstition, an alienness to how we think today.
And yet, the prejudice and discrimination he had encountered was not very different to one he would encounter today. What does it tell us about us?
He had eventually embraced the culture that adopted him and was accepted. Do not forget it is a real story and it happened in 1660.
I have realised long time ago that you can not read or write about the pas and ignore religion. I am very interested in what religion does to us...
The capacity of religion to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.
How did in the past and still do, the powerful and mighty of this world manipulate us and deceive us without knowing?
People always cast a quizzical eye over the irrational, the improbable and the downright impossible acts happening all around us and want explanation....
Sometimes there is no explanation available or many explanations to choose from...there are no roads, no compass and no maps to lead you to the right explanation.
All you have to navigate with is what you are feeling. One tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's belief and to ignore or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts them.
Whatever it is you do really believe in, do not follow the crowd if your heart and your mind tell you otherwise.
After the wild stormy night in the extreme heat of midday the thickest shade to be found was beneath gnarled pepper trees in the yard, there I was with the precious book under my arm.
'War and Peace' by Lev Tolstoy, the greatest human story ever told. My book has a gleaming dust jacket that reproduces a detail form the gale of the Hermitage in St Petersburg.
It captivates like a ripping yarn. The characters are real and the emotions generated in this immense saga of Russian life during the Napoleon Wars have a breathtaking reality.
It shows the lives of the innocent extremists who are destroyed by an opportunistic politician.
It reflects the conscience of the mob when it realises it has just acted in a way that is bestial and ghastly.
This book has an enormous readability that comforts people whenever they are held up, with time on their hands, times of war, time of tribulation...
times of illness...and it teaches us a lesson, time changes, people changes and our attitudes and beliefs are changing constantly and yet we are the same....it is the time to back the grandiosity of our words by the substance of our deeds...
CONTRADICTIONS OF HUMAN NATURE
Following Marcel Proust's advice
on my travels
new landscapes
were not everything
I discovered.
Lost among tall stone walls
taken on with age
their beautiful patina
carefully preserved
I was relieved
to meet
an old Japanese man
who bowed his head
and let me
rest
under his ancient tree,
his branches
lovingly
supported by sturdy poles
he kept carving with an ageless agility.
I bowed my head,
in respect
and farewell
taking with me
a part of an ancient culture
embodied in respect and longevity.
And yet again,
after the March 11
of the 11th year
I walk over the bridge
covered in moss,
entering an old tea-house
with quiet
discreet reverence.
I listen to people,
who talk
about the gloom
of their post-tsunami lives,
bowing my head again,
in respect
and admiration
how stoically
their strength shone
through the disaster.
A Tokyo bride-to-be
wedding's plans
changed to a nightmare.
Her birth place is 'Fukushima'
her groom to be
called the wedding off
listening to well meant
advice
of his family.
While she weeps
unable to accept
such prejudice,
tens of thousands
of refugees
from around
the nuclear plant
look desperately
for shelter
on the cold Tokyo streets,
unable to meet the eyes
of other Japanese
who turn their gaze
and move away
quickly as they can.
When you look
directly
in the eyes
of their children,
bullied and teased
at schools
far away from home
they now attend,
you see the warning,
imprinted there by others:
“I am contaminated – don't come near me.”
When they look you
directly
in the eyes
you can see their souls
proud of their home,
of their ancient culture,
of their proud heritage.
And they can see yours.
“How can we not be moved to help them,”
I ask a passer by,
a Japanese,
“when they look at you with those innocent dark deep eyes,
and their only fault
was
that they were at the wrong place
at wrong time?”
On my quest
determined to believe
in the victory
of goodness
over discrimination and prejudice
I find myself
daydreaming
about valleys deep
and mountains high
remembering
my Grandfather
singing sad folk songs
about wars, famine and loss.
And only now
I understand
why it made
old people's faces
stream
with tears.
My homeland,
a tiny piece of humble land
in the middle of European expansion
and wealth.
Trumped upon,
occupied,
divided,
surrounded
by powerful and mighty
who for so long
denied it
citizens' rights,
language
and its' culture.
If no one else,
my people
would surely understand...
And yet,
they treat their only migrants
from thousands years back,
their Gypsy population
with hate and ignorance.
In the Eastern Europe,
where my homeland is,
one in 50 people believe
there are superior
or inferior races.
I leave behind,
the lowdown
of the high European life.
Before me
opens
the endless horizon,
of the Great Southern land
I call home
for nearly twenty years now.
Follow me
on the road less travelled,
the road of acceptance.
Australians,
after Canadians,
are among
the least racist people
on the planet
according to UN.
Many say,
Australia
was more interesting
when it was young
and isolation
had bred
and sustained
a range of striking eccentricities.
Reading Mark Twain
who sailed here
in 1890
once see
that some native vitality
has been lost
and with it
hopefully
discrimination against
its first inhabitants.
He never actually meet
an Aborigine
and it dawns on him
the reason why
as he hears
many grisly accounts
of their extermination.
Moving in time,
coming back,
'Stories without borders'
by Russian writer
Maria Tumarkin
reflects our national reluctance
to support migrants to these shores.
She believes we have
'an eerily sanitised view
of immigration
as a calculated decision
driven by self-interest
of the economic kind.'
Australian mainstream attitudes
towards immigration
are anything but kind.
What do you really believe,
if anything?
Is there any chance,
that every good deed
is not met
by the mean-spirited,
cynic and ugly one
on its path?
On my quest determined
to believe
in the unbelievable
but encountering
rational explanations
that keep getting
in my way
to enlightenment
I came to the end
of my travels.
Where I go now,
there are no roads,
no compass
and no maps,
all you have to navigate with
is your heart.
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