Time. Such an immaterial thing, and yet it holds so much value. One cannot hold time, physically interact with it in the slightest. And yet we count it, run our entire lives around time. It can be the currency of how one lives, trading time for resources and the like, or how one even defines themselves.
Who can be blamed for wanting to go back to the good ol’ days?
If only one could peel back the layers of time to show what seems to be lost. Reaching out for when one was truly at their prime, and the king of the supposed throne. Those gilded images of a day gone past hide their tints of rose easily however.
Sometimes, it’s better to leave that past buried than revel in it.
To belong to a generation is one thing, but to embrace it entirely traps you. It leaves you exposed to the changes of time, that ever marching force. If you run back, seeking what is now out of your hands, you fall blind to the present going on around you. And while those rose tinted glasses may be to your liking, they can mask the threats headed towards you.
The honeyed lies of the past can lead you to traps that will leave you hanging at the hands of those that want you dead.
It takes strength to look back onto the past, but to move onwards towards the future. The trials presented by the monk have shown benefit however. To be alert, to challenge what one knows and grow from the past have helped refine the pieces of me that were thought to have been left in the past.
It has been slow in my upbringing. Trapped in the dusty old learnings that I had been sealed away with, violence was my swift justice. To slash, cut and live in the shadows of the past are ingrained deep into my programming. But with each lesson of this monk, there is that chance that I may be able to break free. Already it has begun to work it’s way into my head.
For even an old machine can learn new tricks.
That is how we differ. While our shared connections to the past could have bound us as brothers, how we handle them pushes us further apart than the sea. To cling to the past as you have puts you in serious danger, and makes you ignorant of it. It reeks of stagnation and dusty places that no one treads any more.
The only freedom from such a torture is to be cut free. Power down the machines that cling and sputter from the past, and break away into a new path. Only then will you ever free yourself from the trappings that hold you back. Or you can hold onto them, cling on as the world leaves you behind in the wreckage of the past.
Free yourself if you can. Being forgotten is a pain that will etch your soul for eternity.