Everywhere I look, I see a world that’s shifting. Traditions that once shaped communities are fading, replaced by something new, something unfamiliar. Change isn’t always bad, of course. Progress is built on the idea of moving forward. But does progress mean erasing what came before? That’s where I hesitate.
I’ve walked through streets where history whispers from the walls, where every stone tells a story.
But lately, those whispers feel drowned out. Not by the natural course of time, but by something more deliberate. A push to forget, to minimize, to reshape the past in the name of inclusivity, tolerance, or whatever the fashionable term of the day might be.
The irony is that this push often comes from people who claim to champion diversity. But real diversity should mean the preservation of different cultures, not the dilution of them into a bland, uniform nothingness. If a nation has a deep-rooted identity, a culture built over centuries, shouldn’t it be able to say, “This is who we are, and we’re proud of it” without being accused of exclusion or worse?
And yet, any attempt to defend a way of life is met with resistance. There’s a growing pressure to conform, to blur the lines, to open the doors so wide that the foundation itself begins to crack.
I see this struggle everywhere. Communities questioning their place in a world that no longer seems to recognize them. People afraid to speak up for fear of being labeled as closed-minded, when all they want is to hold onto something familiar, something that feels like home.
For me, it’s about respect. If I visit another culture, I do so with an understanding that I am a guest. I wouldn’t demand that they change their customs to suit me. So why is it that the same courtesy isn’t extended in return?
I don’t have all the answers. But I do know this: when a people forget who they are, when they let go of the very things that define them, they become nothing more than a shadow. And a shadow, by its very nature, disappears when the light changes. So here’s my question: how do we embrace the future without losing ourselves? Because if we don’t figure that out soon, we may wake up one day and not recognize the world around us. And worse, we may not recognize ourselves.