We are So the Same

In my first book, A (not so) Simple Life, I often compared my life in the Southern Black Hills to my formative years growing up in Northern Minnesota. The likenesses were more striking than the differences, or perhaps the differences were more alike than I realized before I began to write down my reflections.

The comparisons were separated by years and location, and yet there they were for me in my writing to recognize; things change, but people do not...not really. We learn, mature, love, hate, fear, control, envy, strive, give up, suffer, create, teach, work, enjoy, err, forgive, or not.

My home town paper arrives weekly after 60 years of having moved away to produce my adult life. I am amazed when I read the news from my former home town that they struggle with issues so similar to our community that I sometimes imagine I am reading the news from my present home town. They disagree over issues such as elections, building a new library, the morality of the war in Iraq, and allowing mining in the area that would create temporary jobs but could damage the water in the Boundary Waters, the main tourist draw for the area.

Some of the "old timers" resent the "new-comers" with their disquieting viewpoints. Others welcome a new infusion of ideas; they enjoy expanding their outlook in spite of the discomfort during their conflict to reject the familiar in exchange for the unknown.

Different places, different times, but we still find change difficult, growth a challenge, relationships a continual effort, commitment scary, emotions disconcerting, power corrupting, and the world confusing. One generation can't understand the next one, and living in the "black and white" of certainty fades away as the gray of "maybes" intrude on former beliefs.

Everything changes....nothing changes. I live with this: we are born, we live, we die. That does not change. It is what we do with the living part that makes us who we are.