We Look Far

We follow, in many ways, our ancestors' paths instead of forging our own. We look back to their achievements, their times of peace and conflict, and their colonial past. We look far, beyond our grandparents, and even our great-grandparents, great uncles and aunts. We look far, to understand, to critique, to atone. We look far, to praise or blame these long ago events for our present state. We look far, too far. Our eyes less eager to examine more recent history, for roots of problems, for solutions, for it's too fresh in public memory and forms part of our own lived history. We look far because we do not wish to acknowledge our own mistakes, our own participation, as a nation, in certain events: the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan. We look far, and blame our present division on Victorian values or Empire, and not our own failure to integrate, only to divide further. All-white, all-black, all-male, all-female groups; safe spaces, yes, but charitable, commercial, dramatic enterprises? All one race, all one gender does not, it is obvious, promote equality or tolerance, but then nor do quotas. We look far, to assess power, the power given to or taken by authority figures, the leaders of governments or states, the voted-in officials, and say in response to rapes, murders and mass shootings: 'Never Again', when history, near and far, testifies otherwise. Never, in the historical context, does not exist. Some things cannot be prevented. Humankind is not designed to be all good. We look far, to study the Greats, the great men, the great women, and uncover, too, their flaws. We look far, and in present time rewrite their past, their character, as man, as woman, as playwright, as novelist, as artist. We look near, and study not, in biography, their works, but their personality. We look near, too near, and learn nothing about art.

Picture credit: Ink Valley, 2012, Jacek Yerka (source: WikiArt).

Inspired, in part, by Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life by Lyndall Gordon. Written October 2021.