Tomorrow’s the last show for Dirty Math, a glorious show being put on by my friends of Available Light [Theatre] and I’ve seen it twice and will see it once more. On my way home, I was thinking about all that was talked about in this “Essay Play” (or, as someone else in the Talk-Back session, “Non-Fiction Theatre”) and how broad of a scope (and history of finance) the show covered and I also thought about a question my daughter asked the week before:

“What do you think the world will be like 20 years from now?”

I told her that I didn’t think there’d be much change.  Maybe a few new pieces of technology, but overall, people will remain the same as they are (maybe a little more hectic & hassled than they are now, but basically the same).  Sure, the auto industry might finally take the plunge and build affordable über-fuel efficient cars, maybe there’ll be another war, another devastating flood or earthquake, maybe there will be some medical breakthrough(s) thanks to stem cell research, but overall… not much is gonna be different.

I believe that many, many people have a very hard time with that concept.  We’re all taught that “Nothing endures but change.”  But how much really has changed since that was originally written in thousands of years ago?  We’re still teaching much of the same lessons learned from the Ancients.  What has changed?  Instead of stone tablets, we use Netbooks.  Rather than hopping on a chariet, we climb up into an SUV.  Rather than sending smoke signals, we Tweet and Twitter (well, some do, but I don’t).  It seems that we strive to adapt and change the world that surrounds us, but we tend to fall short in making internal adaptations and changes to that which is within us.

Even if we do “change ourselves,” it doesn’t change things.  We are still ourselves.

There was a  thought that popped into my head on my ride home as all these concepts were swimming in my noggin:

Maybe the only reason we believe there is such a strong division between “then” and “now” (such as how each decade MUST be placed in its proper order & context with all its facts & figures and fashions & styles and what not indicative of that particular decade), isn’t so much that the changes have occurred but that people who lived and matured during that time want to “own” that decade as is it was theirs to possess.   How “different” that time was from now, how much “better” it was back then (or, if the person wants to “own” this time, how much better now is than then).

Yeah, so anyway, that’s what I was thinking about after the show tonight.