It’s April 23, Shakespeare’s birth and death days. I’m still a bit behind on Discover Prompts. Here’s an entry for Day 18 – New.
Every day, I grow more self-conscious about getting older. My skin is changing. My hair is thinning. My paunch is expanding, though it’s not big by most standards, big for me as a skinny guy. My eyes are worsening. And yet, inside, I still feel like a teenager. I still have stamina, good health, excitement in my bones to try new things.
“Old” and “new” – rivals, antonyms, though “young” could be a more exact antonym for old.
When I write, I always try for a new perspective, a way to see the world with fresh language. I’m a believer in the adage, “there’s nothing new under the sun.” It’s the treatment we give a subject that is new. I’m not a firm believer in that adage anymore. There are new things in the world. When I was younger, we didn’t have cell phones, or the internet, microwave ovens, or Kindles. There weren’t golden doodles, or designer cats, or reality television shows. I guess it depends on when you date such things from. The ideas for such things existed long before the physical manifestations of them stepped onto the world stage.
Everything old is new again. Ah the internet, such a treacherous beast. I’ve found this phrase attributed to the song writer Peter Allen and to Stephen King. Finding the etymological source of this phrase is tricky. But sometimes it’s the import of the phrase rather than its source that we must trust.
The first, the original, the source isn’t always the best, the everlasting, the fount of all knowledge. Old ideas are remade, become new, take on new life, new purposes, new goals, new prominence.
The peak of a mountain erodes, leaving an egg-shaped rock near the top. As its roots weaken, the egg falls and comes to rest in a new place. The original peak now has a new top. The original egg now holds a position of prominence in a new location. It is still the peak, though. If it has any lasting quality, it will remain the peak until it erodes into a fine dust, tossed into the upper atmosphere and blown through all the galaxy by the winds of space. Until then……… what once was, remains. What remains is ever new with each rise of the sun.
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