We all speak of the way things were,
the way things used to be,
but we must beware distortion
in the lens through which we see.
Events and people in our past,
coloured by passing years,
are glorified by love and respect:
we forget their pain and fears.
Those people and events define
who we’ve become today,
and tint our thoughts and actions
in each and every way.
Consider though, they were like us,
and products of their age:
they struggled, loved, lived and died,
each of them, rogue or sage.
The danger is to glorify
those who have gone before;
to think that things were better
in those distant days of yore.
They gave to us genetic gifts
so we’d evolve and grow,
and walk proudly in this future
that they would never know.
To yearn for return to a simpler past
is dangerously atavistic,
and dishonours those genetic gifts
with a view far too simplistic.
Like Biblical talents, our inheritance
should be to honour our traditions,
and not be buried, deep in time,
but to better our conditions.
Remember fondly those who have passed,
and love and praise them well,
but what atavism sees as Utopia,
may have been a personal hell.
