Time To Change

 https://rpentelbury.blogspot.com/2025/04/time-to-change.html

Time To Change

April 30, 2025

At last, there are words. In the beginning, so it was too. Until then, all was an abstraction of energy not yet given any form, by man. And as our ‘sense of life’ developed, (to quote, in this April month, my beloved brother,) we began verbal constructs that not only turned sound into malleable meanings in our various languages, but that then became inviolate mental concepts that history has proven we are prepared to die for. Yet a house has very many shapes, dimensions, and locations, even though we understand it epistemologically to mean a place of shelter. So it goes. To formulate a paragraph of coherent meaning, let alone a series of phrases or sentences that inspire, is as much dependent on the muse of ancient and atavistic invigoration, as it is on the immediacy of the moment. Pausing to think, overlong, is to lose one’s energy on the train track of thoughts, despite such a break sometimes being but a period of gestation. Since the political slogan is ‘time for a change,’ what does that phrase really mean to you?

The difficulty of pretentious phrases is that it requires commensurate knowledge to participate in their comprehension, (much like the esoterica of knowing that Black Beauty is about a horse.) And if deprived from that cultural enlightenment as a child, so too may one not anymore know who Arthur the Great was, or what Hornby Dunblo means. Each of us is captured by the Petri dish of acculturation into which we are born. Some climb the lip and depart for yet some other grouping, but the predominances of life is what these words are about. One observes that we are persons each struggling much to maintain and persevere with our habitual norms. Yet all around, the world is yet again embroiled in the threats of great, ineluctable, change.

Political divisiveness slices into the fabric of our societies. We are hard put not to view the distinctions between Them, versus Us. And we are cautious in our interactions with friends and family to check into their proclivities, lest we tread on their firmly held beliefs, values, and constructs. The binary division becomes apparent. And the constructs of terminology, thought patterns, belief systems, and values can trounce ethics, morals, integrity, and temperaments, depending on whom one addresses. Yet even better, listening proves the most valuable. One’s vote is one’s own, and gathering whatever one can from others helps much to make one’s mind up, as uncertain, ultimately, as one may feel about the outcome. It is easier to stay in one’s lane, independent of who is at the forefront, and to vote as one’s habits have been, all one’s life. (As such the days may not, in deeds, become ‘sunny’.) Now there’s a Canadian yoking of constructs, paradigms, esoteric knowledge, and history, in a single phrase. Sonny?

Thing is, these words are not meant to persuade you. Nor are they meant to define the only way forward. They are but a nudge toward a more mindful meta-cognition, more intensity of action, more clarity of purpose, and more compassion for the whole. Without one recognizing that we all are struggling toward enlightenment, spiritual evolution, and even geopolitical peace and inclusion, at whatever level of application to task any of us may be observed, evaluated, or professed to be operating within, one is impoverishing oneself of hope, of empowerment, of influence, and of contribution toward the health of the whole. Yes, it is natural for some to be self serving and selfish, but now is the time for genuinely including, accepting, assimilating, and integrating the variables among all of one’s neighbours. By country. By nationality. By religion. By political affiliation. And by a universal sensibility toward The Whole. Still…

“I can do that, but what about them? They cannot! And if they charge at me, I’ve little choice but to retaliate in equal measure.” Yes. And the wars continue. And the political systems perpetuate divides. And the religions perpetuate hierarchies. And thinking, itself, wrestles and wrangles with the spirit, such that one is weary of it all, and sad, and at a loss for words, and fearful of getting this wrong.

So, we go with the flow. Or does one? Do we wait for change to be mandated from without, or are we each given to change, from within? Time, we gather, for each and every one of us, is finite. Truly, is change?

Foolhardy Fellowships

 

Presumptions can be foolish. The coach pointed at me. “You should all run like him. Do that again in slow-motion, boyo. Let’s see that perfect style of yours in action.” Well, for about 20 yards or so, I did it, focusing on the precision of ‘my style’. Being only 12 years old, I knew nothing, really, of ‘how to run.’ The sense of it came naturally to me. And as for ‘slow-motion,’ that too, for me, was just a concept. In those early years of the 60’s, going to movies in South Africa, for me, was a most infrequent thing, and I do not recall having ever seen slow-motion. So, on that hot and sweaty Sports Day I tried to present what I thought it might look like. “That’s good enough,” yelled the coach to stop me. “See,” he told the others, “that’s how to run.”

We were in the Pilditch Stadium grounds, just behind the soaring concrete structure, warming up. It was at last the all-schools’ meet, and I’d always made first in my own school’s playground, so sprinting was a delight. And now here, from the start, I’d impressed the coach with my take-offs. After all, with school practices, I’d come up with reacting to the ‘Buh…,” and did not wait for the “...ang!” of the teacher’s yell. Now, with this new teacher taking a special liking to me while warming us up, with each of us from a different school for the 100 yards dash, I thought I’d have the race ‘in the bag.’

And then, soon enough, we were in the big stadium. My first time. It felt very exciting to see all those people there. The grandstands looked full. The huge field had all sorts of simultaneous events going on. Long jump. High jump. Discus-throwing. There were even races like the 220 yards, the 440, and the fifteen-hundred-yard runs. I’d never conceived of them. (But no one, I discerned, sprinted quite like me.) They even had a real gun! Our impoverished school, Burgher Right Primary, had not had such things. Nor had we even had a track on which to practice. We ran on uneven ground. And a stake at either end had demarcated the start and stop of the 100 yards over a lumpy and uneven lawn. Never mind. I’d been the fastest in my school. And now, here at the big event with our warm-ups just done, I’d shown myself the fastest off the white line, and the best in style too. Sure, I was the only one in bare feet, (as I recall it,) but shoes would just weigh me down. So, when at last ready, with about eight or ten of us at the start line, I was determined to show all the people in the stands just how fast I was.

Hubris. Arrogance. Self-righteousness. These were not terms in my ken, back in those days. Nor was the obverse of those debilitating terms, with universal concepts like compassion, empathy, or concomitance. I was a boy, and like most of my fellows, I thought the best way to be a boy was to best others on every occasion. After all, ‘competition’ was designed to prove just who was ‘best’. So was swimming. So was running. So too, even, were exams.

But a strange thought overcame me as I waited for the, “On your marks!” command. What if I slow-motioned my start, and my run too, and showed them all how it’s done? Surely the very force of my energy would control the others, and we all would run in a slow motion too, and…?

Well, I came dead last. I recall the others springing up, with me still at the starter’s line, and then my still, foolishly, determinedly, running in slow-motion, perfectly, all the while intent on drawing the others back to run that way too. But of course, I never caught up.

Somewhere in our makeup is the sense that our behaviours, our connection, our similarities, are only individualized by the shells of our molecular inheritance. ‘All we need is love.’ All we need is each other. All we need is empathy, compassion, integration, and cooperation, so that others similarly, if not simultaneously, may conduct themselves the same way we do. But real life teaches us that birds of a feather do tend to gather, and even they have their pecking order. We generally have a compulsive need to be first, or better than, or at least be a part of, so that we can be secure with who we are, what we do, and even how we think. Yet I’m of a mind that right now, in the eighth decade of my life, with our world on fear-filled tenterhooks, one is best not to expect one’s behaviours to affect all others, other than to keep being the best that one can be.