The ‘Sins’ of Our Generations
You are a product of so many things. Your genetics, your experiences, your choices. In those 3 categories are encompassed so many possibilities that the universe would probably grow cold before we had finished discussing them.
Yet one thing resonates across all 3 of those in a rather strange manner, and imprints on us in ways that I don’t think we’ll ever fully understand.
Because time leaves its mark on all of us.
And I’m not talking about the increasing wrinkles on my face, not the gray hairs that seem to sprout daily upon my face. Even though time weakens all of us in its own way, it’s greatest contribution to our evolution is the way that we are confined within the ‘time in which we live’.
It shapes our understanding, our beliefs, the way we act and even our vocabulary.
We also adopt the thinking of our generation.
Which is both good and bad, because we can become caught up in a sense of superiority over those who have gone before, not realizing that those who are coming after us will likely view us through the same lens of judgment that we ourselves use now. For each generation learns new things by standing on the shoulders of the one that came before.
And we can see the faults of their generation as strongly as we are blind to our own.
Sometimes we get so caught in those faults, that we can lose sight of the fact that they may have been trying their very best with the information that they knew. It’s very easy to look at the actions of someone else and consider them malicious, when all they were was malignant.
All of us have done things that we thought were right, only to find out later that we were, in fact, very wrong.
Once we begin to judge, we unintentionally begin to close off many avenues to wisdom that may reside within those who may not see things quite as we do, yet see them with a perspective that we have not yet achieved.
If we decide they have no value, because they do not see as we do, then we isolate ourselves from what we may learn, and find that we end up learning some of their lessons over again ourselves.
Lessons we may have avoided had we listened rather than judged, learned rather than ignored.
Before we judge those who have come before us for their differences of view, or their well intentioned actions with which we do not agree, perhaps we should offer unto them the same level of understanding that we will one day be requesting of someone younger than ourselves, asking for forgiveness for “knowing not what we did”.
Every generation blames the one before, but it doesn’t have to.
Because if we can within ourselves find the peace to accept our own mistakes that were made of ignorance and not malice, maybe we can find also the kindness, the honestly and the forgiveness that we owe those who have made mistakes before us.
Forgiveness is an essential step on the pathway to peace; one which you will never reach your destination without.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
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