Project Vision 21

In my ceaseless and mostly unsuccessful attempt to still be part of a world that because of my age, look, and lack of technology rejects me more and more every day, last weekend I decided to update the operating system of my computer, a process they told will be automatic and painless.

It was an automatic process and the results were automatically disastrous. As soon as the upgrade was done, my operating system discover a “compatibility issue” and consequently my computer was unable to connect to Internet.

I thought I have done something wrong, but soon, thanks to a second and older computer, I discovered the problem was with the upgrade, and the very well known company that sells the most-often used operating system in the world knew about the problem and it was offering a small program to solve it.

That small program didn’t solve the problem and instead it created new ones. Of course, the same well known company also offered solutions to those problems.

Unfortunately, for me and for my computer, I soon learned that those “solutions” were incompatible with my computer. As a consequence, I couldn’t even start my computer because now several files were “corrupted.”

What it began as a noble attempt to upgrade my computer and keep it protected soon become a nightmare that lasted for two days. I though my computer was totally useless and I even though I have lost all my data.

However, there was a solution: to re-install the operating system and the original programs as they were in my computer when I bought it three years ago. It took me several hours but I did it, avoiding thus a potentially unpleasant situation.

This experience put my nerves and my patience to the test, but it also taught me two things. First, we are not always ready for change and change is no always good. And change shouldn’t be confused with upgrades, and upgrades are not always progress. Those are all different concepts.

In addition, in the process of re-installing my original operating system, I discovered that during the past three years there have been almost 100 updates for my computer. And many of those updates were not even installed in my system, increasing thus its incompatibility.

Many of us are in a similar situation. There are so many changes and change happens so fast that we can’t keep up with change. Sooner or later, we discover we are no longer compatible with the world around us and we can’t even communicate with that reality.

That leads me to the second lesson. Sometimes the only thing you can do and you should do is go back to the beginning and rediscover your origin. What’s the point of adding new things to our life if those so-called “solutions” only create new and bigger problems for us?

Our life is so precious we shouldn’t be living our life just searching for “novelties” and neglecting in the process our own origin and roots.