nothing really changes
We are always thinking that we are experiencing something completely new. We think we created something that no one before us has and no one after will but that’s just completely untrue. Almost everything around us in some way shape or form has been done time and time again through all of history, it just looks different.
You can take this in a million different ways: politics, conflicts, fashion, entertainment, human rights. But no matter how you look at it, it always seems we essentially are always repeating what we’ve done in the past. We can easily see simple examples of this like for instance: for thousands of years, people have attended theaters and sporting matches, just like we do now. The sports and shows are very very different but the act and sentiment are completely the same. Fashion pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable - at one point it was women wearing pants and now it’s a whole slew of things. The older generations complain about the younger ones because the younger ones rebel and have easier lives and new technologies the older ones never did. No matter how you look at it, these repetitive patterns remain true.
I’ve recently read the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which by the way I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend to every man, woman, and child, and it amazes me how relatable the things he writes in 180 AD as the emperor of what essentially was the entire world at that point are to me, a 21-year-old girl in the 21st century. It’s fascinating that the basic human desires, downfalls, and spirit, though seemingly different, at its core remain the same. As societies, we change the way we govern, the way we speak, and our ways of life, but really, we remain the same. Though we often ignore it, we all know that history is constantly repeating itself, over and over and over. The same things happen but just in different ways.
The world is almost constantly fighting, things almost always look bleak. But in the moment it can be difficult to recognize that even if the situation is new, the feelings aren’t. In my grandparents’ lives alone, they faced The Great Depression, World War 2, The Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, 9/11, COVID, and everything in between. These scary and unpredictable things are constantly happening around us. My grandma, along with most other people in this country, quite literally thought the world was going to end in a nuclear war at any second. I don’t mean to say these things are unimportant or not terrifying and traumatizing, I just mean to say that things have always and probably will always look scary and unending. Everything was new at one point, everything was unpredictable and had no end in sight, but there always is.
