Success or Slavery?

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
"We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—--also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic." Numbers 11:5 我们记得，在埃及的时候不花钱就吃鱼，也记得有黄瓜，西瓜，韭菜，葱，蒜。民数记11:5

"Things done don't talk of; things completed don't cast blame; don't blame someone for the past." Confucius, Analects (Bayi:21) 子闻之曰：“成事不说，遂事不谏，既往不咎。”

Were Those the Days? In the late 90s, an elderly Chinese neighbor lamented to me, "I miss the great days of the 1950s! Life was simple, you didn't have to lock your door at night, no one would ever steal your bicycle! Not like today!"

Numbing Nostalgia. Nothing numbs memories better than nostalgia! It is true that few people stole bikes in the 1950s, but one reason was because few people could afford a bicycle, so anyone pedaling about town on a stolen bicycle would have stuck out like someone today driving around Xiamen in a stolen Maserati (though we do have a few now!).

There was, of course, a heady, fresh spirit in the New China of the 1950s. The Chinese had, at long last, created their Promised Land, but they had no ideas of the two difficult decades ahead of them before then began the amazing reforms of 1978. I think that my neighbor who longed for the 1950s, would not have cared to repeat the 60s and 70s. And I suspect that, if pressed, he would have admitted that the China of the 90s, where people had bicycles, fridges and televisions, was much better than the China of the 50s, when most people had a tough time finding food, much less a bicycle.

[Of course, today it is again hard to find bicycles--but that's because most people now have cars.]

It is tempting to idealize the past when swamped by the complexities of today and the uncertainties of tomorrow, but the past was never as good as we remembered it--as the Jews learned the hard way.

Slaves or Victors The children of Israel spent 40 years in the desert on their way to the Promised Land because they still had the mentality not of conquerors but of slaves. They faced problems not as opportunities to learn and grow but with complaints, and longings for the "free" fish and vegetables of Egypt. But the price of those "free" fish and vegetables had been mindless but relatively "secure" dawn-to-dusk slave labor in the fields and brickyards, and barely subsisting upon the "free" fish and vegetables scavenged from river and fields.

Success or Slavery? Do we see adversity as an opportunity to grow, or are we slaves to a past that never really existed--or perhaps slaves to our fears of the future?  It is our choice.

Regardless of what we face today, today is the best day of our life because it is the only day we can do anything about. Yesterday is but water under the bridge. We should learn from it but not long for it. And tomorrow offers hope and a Promise, but only if we prepare for it today. So don't be slave to past or future but seize this day, and be thankful that every day is a new day--lest we end up like the poor guy in Groundhog Day who lived the same day over and over. (I certianly would not care to relearn the lessons of puberty, my first date, Air Force basic training, or my first year in China!).

Learn from yesterday--and then move on.

See The Night After Groundhog Day

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