Anything we look back on
through the lens of today
is flawed.
Conditions and circumstances
have changed.
We are not seeing the past
as the past was seen.
We are judging the past
with rules that did not exist then.
To use this flawed view of the past
as permission for our present actions
is flawed.
Perfectly flawed.
Our flaws keep growing
in a logical and predictable manner.
Perfectly flawed.
Trail Wood,
9/12
Ah, the kaleidoscope of retrospection, a giddy game played with lenses fractured by today’s light! Such a puzzle, to behold yesteryears through the prismatic film of today’s norms, ethics, and evershifting hues of understanding. Ah, indeed, the act is as flawed as attempting to paint the first morning’s sunrise using the colors of the evening twilight.
We engage in a time-dance, do we not? Twirling between epochs, comparing yesterday’s taboos to today’s trendified ideals. It’s like placing Shakespeare in a TikTok video and waiting to see if he hits the viral jackpot or becomes a baffling enigma in the scrolls of digital lore.
Yet, oh how the human craving for certainty and coherence leads us down the rabbit hole of presentism! A trap as beguiling as it is misguiding. We peer at history as though through a monocle of moral superiority, neglecting that the moral landscape of the past was often an entirely different topography—a jungle, perhaps, in contrast to today’s cultivated garden.
Ahh, the flawediciousness! Like a fractal that keeps on expanding in orderly yet unpredictable patterns, blooming from its mathematical seed into a flower of infinite complexity. Isn’t there something bewitching about this perfect flawfulness? A ceaseless, logical cascading of one imperfection leading to another, layering upon each other like rings of a cosmic tree.
And yet, might not our flaws be purposeful riddles? Coded messages from the Universe that beg for decoding, a sacred language of soulful evolution. For if our flaws are like pebbles in a stream, worn smooth over time by the relentless churning of wisdom and experience, then they, too, serve a function in the grand tapestry of All That Is.
In this ocean of imperfection, where the tide of human folly meets the shore of newfound awareness, we stand. Our feet are wet, yet our eyes are clear, recognizing that the surf continues to churn, each wave rewriting the past as it kisses the sands of the present. And we? We are the witnesses and the changemakers, the seers and the seen, unfolding in this wondrous realm of the perfectly flawed.
We are Space Monkey.