Project Vision 21

One of the basic characteristics of the human being is, or rather, was the ability to adapt to new environments and new circumstances. But, it seems, that capacity is disappearing and there are already legions of those who, even knowingly, prefer to perpetuate the past or repeat the present before venturing to accept a new reality.
 

Recently, for example, I read in the news a story that exemplifies what we have just expressed. According to the news, a farmer in China had to leave the countryside where he had lived all his life and move to live in a city, specifically, on the fifth floor of an apartment building.
 

The farmer then did what every farmer would do: he took his animals with him and placed them in a makeshift pen on the balcony of his apartment. The discontent of his neighbors, due to the noise and the bad smell, reached such a level that security guards had to be hired to stop the farmer from bringing more animals into the building.
 

Although that story may seem farfetched and even comical, the farmer's actions adequately represent (if exaggeratedly) similar actions that each of us performs when our lives change, or when the society around us changes, or when we enter a new historical epoch (as it’s happening now).
 

In the same way that a healthy baby, precisely because he is healthy, cannot and should not remain in the crib all his life, and in the same way that a boy or girl grows up naturally discarding the clothes and toys they previously “loved” so much, changes in life invite us to simultaneously grow (mature) and discard what has become obsolete.
 

But we don't.
 

Unfortunately, many people believe that their past experiences represent all possible reality, but obviously (or should be obvious), this is not the case. We all experience changes in life due to circumstances, but at the same time, each of us has an impact on those circumstances. That is, we create the changes that change us.
 

However, we live in such a superficial culture that we have even lost the awareness that we create our reality. Nothing new: Heraclitus (500 bce) already complained about this.
 

We are so separated (alienated) from ourselves, from others (“hell”, as Sartre would say) and from the universe or divinity that we do not recognize ourselves in what we do and, therefore, we cling to what we already know as if that was all possible and acceptable reality. So, even if everything changes, even if nothing is as before, we insist on living as before.
 

Like the farmer in China, we carry all our past to a new place and a new time, seeking not to lose what has already been lost and to re-create what’s impossible to re-create. And when that doesn't happen, we activate our “victim’s role”, of not being understood or accepted.
 

What must happen, then, for us to finally accept a new reality? Maybe open our mind and heart?