Since the beginning of 2011, events have not kept pace with one another. I tried so hard to follow them that I had a hard time putting my emotions in order.
I was excited about what happened in Tunisia, then unexpectedly inspired by Egypt, then scared by Libya and worried about Japan. And by the end of this year, something else is sure to happen. Faster than ever, world events succeed each other, and we do not have time to digest, understand, or even simply survive them. I really don’t know what to think. Each new day is like an antidote to the feeling we just experienced. Flipping through the day before yesterday’s newspaper, I feel like I’m in the era of black and white cinema.
The present instantly becomes obsolete and acquires a taste of the past. It seems that centuries pass in seconds. Not only that: sometimes information loses its relevance in just an hour or even a minute. We read the news on the Internet and before we finish reading, new facts are discovered that change the meaning of what we just learned. How can one look with a clear eye at a problem whose very formulation is changing before our eyes?
Isn’t this frenzy of the moving world a response to our way of life? Perhaps we have become more impatient, more demanding? Undoubtedly. The rhythm of our love stories, for example, has undeniably changed. It’s getting harder to hold on to the feeling. We say «love» and think about breaking up. We say «desire» and think of satiety.
The present becomes the past so quickly that we simply don’t have time to wait for the future.
We live with a constant sense of expiration date. No one else dares to take a chair and settle down in present time. It is difficult to make plans in a constantly changing world. You need at least a little stability to try to see the future. Perhaps the essence of modern life is precisely this: the present becomes the past so quickly that we simply do not have time to wait for the future.
The future is today. The best example of this is the attitude to topical issues. It is enough to take at least the ubiquitous presidential elections of 2012. For many months, the media does not talk about anything else, as if the reasoning for the year ahead means at least something. Who knows today what he will think tomorrow? Sometimes it seems that what is happening now is of no interest. All thoughts are about the future president.
This pursuit of the future becomes exhausting. We must first feel what we live, try to understand it. I wish we didn’t jump from one story to another, as if wars, revolutions and tsunamis are just pictures on a TV screen that can be switched. We need to re-learn to appreciate the present and bring back the fashion for the word «today»!