The gift to be different

Subject: The gift to be different.



Watching the commemorative programs marking the life of the Queen one sees one’s own life lurking there in the shadows reflected by those times and events.

Where were you when that happened, how the social fashions of the day ruled our contemplative ideas at that time, how have we changed, if at all and how have we learned to cope with the passing years. The Queen was a cornerstone, apparently unchanging in her fundamentals, as should we all be in ours. I don’t care much for popularism, it’s ebb and flow, it’s catch all pronouncements, it’s strictures, as if we had non of our own. This centralising effort to shape us  and homogenise us when our gift is to be different.

Of course norms do change, fashions come and go but our fundamental beliefs remain the same. You can teach a dog new tricks but it remains a dog and my own bark hasn’t changed all that much in 82 years. People say that is a weakness your stuck in the same groove unwilling to learn but what if what they want to teach you is shallow and irrelevant, only presented to please. Pleasing is not the same as believing and whilst you may believe in the wrong thing as far as current trends are concerned your old fashioned concepts regarding value is special. Values change only if you have non, values mark you for mention, only if you have some.

The Queen is a case in point. Her values are now the things for which she is best remembered, her stoicism her unflinching purpose to do the job she had been given to the very best of her ability. In a world of short term gain where change is regarded as fundamental but how can we keep on changing. Where are those fundamentals which might rule our lives if change is so valued since in essence, change is to deny and often trash what went before. The values your parents bestowed were hopefully precious and not negotiable. Stick with them, don’t be dragooned into flim flam, the deceptive nonsense which passes for  wisdom. Don’t be hoodwinked to modernise for modernising sake when all that means is swopping old values for rhetoric