It’s a bright and sunny day with minus temperaturesIt’s a bright and sunny day with minus temperatures and strong winds. It is cold, cold, cold outside. At least the sunshine pours in and tries to persuade me that it would be a wonderful time to go outside for a walk. However, I can see the outdoor thermometer, as well as seeing the flag in front of the house whipping madly about. There is definitely a strong wind of change blowing.
I used to be a folk musician many decades ago, singing songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They are a-Changin’,” by Bob Dylan. I was a teenager singing songs of protest and freedom during the era of the Vietnam War [known as the American War in Vietnam], the Flower Children, and the awakening of the will to live on planet we vowed to protect. I wore long hair, played six and twelve-string guitars, wore sandals and moccasins, and wrote newspaper editorials about saving the land and its people. I was an idealistic young man.
That young man didn’t disappear. What has changed is my body which now shows evidence of seven decades of living. The idealism didn’t disappear. Rather, the hole in my heart that gave rise to my protest about the way things were, has enlarged. A second hole in my heart was healed as I left life as a solitary folksinger and became a husband in 1971. Two months later, having settled into a new way of being, John Lennon wrote and released, “Imagine.” I imagined all sorts of things, I even dared to imagine myself as a father and teacher, dreams that time would fulfil.
Today, in the sunshine and the wind, another change is unfolding. A new president in the USA is to take his place with a woman to serve as his vice-president. The hopes of 80+ million people who voted for him are being realised. The hopes of hundreds of millions around the world are being uplifted at the same time. And more importantly, the shadowy figures that were gnawing away at the collective soul of humanity, are slithering back into the shadows, at least for a while. “Give Peace a Chance.”