I wrote in this journal all my little secrets, the boy I was fond of, things happening in my family, my heart aches, my activities, my fears, my joys, and only my BFF (best friends forever) could read some of it, as the rest of it was kept in absolute secrecy.
What's a blog? It is a journal, but a journal that is opened to the world. Is it any different? Oh, yes, in a journal we write things from the bottom of our hearts, things we are even ashamed of sometimes, of course those are not to be read even by our bff.
We all have an image we present to the world. We are all ashamed of confessing our secret thoughts, sometimes, thoughts we are even ashamed to have! We are ashamed of confessing our secret feelings, we are ashamed to tell people that we love them, to tell people what we really think of them. We live in a flattering, lying world, I do believe honesty and truth should rule the world but we are probably not yet ready for the truth.
And the truth shall set you free!!
Are we free? No, we are not and we will never be free if we don't leant some wisdom. I am thinking of the 10 commandments. I am thinking of things that have been taught year after year, generation after generation for thousands of years.
After the technological advance of the 20th century and especially after the 2 world wars, human beings thought they could re-invent the world their own way.
When I was a teenager I used to think that the 60's was the best decade ever. Why? Teenagers come to a world they don't understand. They are not longer children and not yet adults. Adulthood is a mystery to apprehend and when they were children they lived in a 'fantasy world', sheltered, protected, even a magical world with fairy tales and games. Teenage years are the years of awakening and learning what the world is really like.
What was your first reaction then? Do you remember? I do. I was shocked, I was disappointed with the adults for turning the world I was supposed to grow up into such a mess. I found out the horrors of war, drugs, prostitution, murdering, thieving, I found out about discrimination, racism, hatred, hunger... I found out about abortion, rejection, lying. I found out adults lied!
When a teenager finds out the world is not a fairy tale and they have to live in it, the first reaction is: rejection. A teenager wants a better world, a world of love and peace, a teenager wants a world like the fairy tale world of their childhood, where good always triumphs and everybody lives happily every after. But a teenager wants that in the real world. So, when I saw in the 60's, there was the dream of living in peace, freedom and love, I thought this was wonderful. By growing up I found out it was not. Do you know why? Because it was another lie.
We all want love, but love is not synonym of having sex with the entire world. Sex is not love, love is a different matter. Freedom is not about having drugs to have an escapism from reality. Freedom is not being free at someone else's expenses. Love, freedom, justice can exist, but with responsibility, with consequences, with growing up. The other shortcuts are in fact highly destructive. They are false promises, they are lies. At first they seem to be a lot of fun, but they end up causing destruction. A teenager wouldn't know that. In our teenage years we think we know everything, but we don't and only later on in life we can see that.
For this 60's generation, parents were 'square', they conformed to the rules. That generation lost the art of cooking, sewing, embroidering, dancing, playing an instrument. The easy gratification idea was installed in this new empty world.
I am leaning Ballet, ballroom and pastry. You would tell me those things are not related but they are, in a very strange way. My ballroom dance teacher says: nobody dances properly anymore, our parents learnt how to dance. In the pastry class, it is said that nobody cooks anymore, we all go to the supermarket and buy a ready made cake. When did it get lost? The 60's generation.
In one hand there were the horrors of the 2 wars nobody wanted to repeat, in the other hand, parents that had starved and seeing the horrors of war, tried to make up for their children. Is it wrong? Is it wrong to give children more that we had? Of course not, giving is great, but parents forgot more and more how to teach their children about responsibility, gratitude, appreciation, respect. The generations that followed got more and more lost, more and more forgetful.
I am not such a pessimist that I don't believe we have the ability of changing it. I think we should re-insert cookery, dance, proper music and embroidery classes in schools. I think we should teach the children to work, not enslave them, but by performing little tasks at their reach, like preparing a simple meal, making their beds. We should avoid having another spoiled generation for the future's sake. We should teach respect for the teachers, parents, and those should inspire respect back. Those notions are not old fashioned, they are eternal.
I find the world lacking more and more of respect, of love, of knowledge. By having knowledge of our past we can move to the future, a future based in the legacy. Changing without erasing. Changing with conscience, with wisdom.
Well, why do I think about the 10 commandments? Because those were teachings to last forever, those were not repressive notions, but those were guidelines for human beings to live in a better way and in a better world and to avoid suffering and pain. As Christianity became so out of fashion, those values are also slowly being erased, corrupted, even laughed at.
I am not going to deny that the church has many flaws, flaws that have lead to some hypocrisy and many false churches are around, churches made by men are full of flaws. I avoided going to church for many years because I could not stand the narrow mindedness and jealousy that existed in the churches. Those man made institutions are man like: filled with flaws but sometimes necessary.
If we love God above everything and acknowledge he is above us, that make us all the same, we are all the same, nobody is better or worse.
If we love others like we love ourselves, we respect them. But we need to respect ourselves first, or else we won't know what love is. Love in the greater meaning of the world, that comes with understanding of who we deeply are.
Killing, stealing, we all know it is wrong but why? Another commandment. Imagine if we lived in a world where we could steal, kill do whatever we wanted? Chaos. Of course, this is part of love, if you really love someone you would kill them or steal from them, but this is a detailed set of rules, nothing is implicit.
I could go on and on but I hope we all know how it goes. Basic rules to keep us at bay and to protect us agains ourselves, and we are, most frequently, our worse enemies.
So here I am, digressing again. I was meaning to talk about blogs. I wanted to say that blogs are not diaries, where we can be absolutely honest, knowing that nobody will read them. So I will try to be very honest here, the most I can, as if I was going to write my own personal diary. I firmly believe that honesty can be perceived and only an honest message gets across. By being honest, a human being can truly relate to another because deep down we are all the same, cultural differences apart. The essence is the same. We truly are all brothers and sisters, all part of the same human family.
I am going to clean my house.
See you soon,
Gisele
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