Years ago, Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall and prove his goals for restructuring. Some walls are easier removed than others.
My brother and sister-in-law recently returned from a month in Eastern Europe. It’s become a custom for us to get together after a trip to share stories and experiences. They are world travelers too, open to new experiences and excited to learn new cultures. It’s not often a cultural divide cannot be bridged; this time was no different, and yet there was a common theme woven through their tales that provided a springboard to complex and nuanced thought.
“I often felt like Oliver Twist,” my brother said. “Cautiously approaching the headmaster and quivering with fear as I asked for more porridge.”
The people weren’t rude. On the contrary, he explained they were quite polite and often curious. Generally speaking though, the culture appeared more rigid and stoic than those of their neighboring Western countries. We wondered if this was the result of a history steeped in communism.
There is a residue of oppression that remains even after liberty is obtained. The emotional filters and patterns of thinking that once were required for personal survival become an albatross, a reminder of the past and a roadblock to the future. Such a burden is not easily managed; wounds are not easily healed. The scars on society are equally damaging. And they are often timeless, present for generations to come.
My mother was born during the Great Depression. She would often share anecdotes of this time, telling stories and tales both comic and tragic. This was a time when sustainability beyond the job market was not just a suggestion, but also a lifestyle, a necessity.
My grandparents lived on the “right” side of the tracks, immersed in poverty, but without the shame. They lived in a historic area of the city with a small chicken coop and a goat in the backyard (a definite code violation today). He was a butcher, able to bring home the unsold, aged beef when it was removed from the counter, which meant they were one of the few families in the area with meat on the table. She did laundry, knitted and sewed for others—more for barter than cash. Together, they opened a makeshift terrace apartment in their home that would provide enough income for my mother to go to school.
Today we often look to education and career for security; they lived in a time where creativity and ingenuity were the more viable options. Supply was more important than financial gain because the dollar was just a myth. As a result, my grandparents were obsessive about canning foods, victory gardens, family reunions and helping strangers. These attitudes would follow them throughout their lives; the echoes could still be heard two generations later.
Hunger changes you. It’s not just a physical response, but mental and emotional. I learned that from the subliminal messages carried down from my grandparents, and from my father. He was a prisoner during World War II and knew first-hand what it was to be hungry, how it felt to be slowly starved. He had a tendency to hoard food, to can and store it in abundance. Expiration dates and FDA ratings didn’t matter. The illusion of a full pantry was somehow comforting.
Fear is the great captor. After dealing with work camps, soup lines and rationing, my grandparents were determined to have other options. Returning from war, my father was the male version of Scarlett O’Hara, ripping the root from the ground and screaming to the universe “I’ll never be hungry again!”
As I listened to my brother, I considered the residue and scars of a post-communist society. The idea of asking for more, of expecting more than what you have been given is still a foreign concept. Human rights and the freedoms that bring joy to every moment and light in the darkness are within their grasp and yet still distant dreams, the experience of neighboring places that feel worlds away. The effects of communism are still prevalent because the memory is still alive, not learned in history books or nurtured through families, but existing in the painful scars of the living generation. They have moved from a dream into freedom, but liberty hasn’t seeded in their hearts to produce in their lives… or in their spirits.
It occurs to me the memory of bondage can be found in almost every free society: in the first and second generation genocide survivors currently building their cultural infrastructure; in the seventh generation after slavery, still fighting for identity and equal rights; in the 13th generation of a nomad civilization, still seeking a state. The list goes on. They are all people driven by conviction and fear, by passion and strength—sometimes reactive, sometimes destructive, and often extreme—to bring hope, independence and freedom that will not only heal the wounds, but also provide protection from future injury. Unfortunately, the tools and strategies passed from generation to generation don’t continue to produce positive results. Old filters distort the new view; past patterns cannot shape the new generation. You can see it in action when what once brought awareness now breeds discontent; what once encouraged positive change now produces hate; what once offered hope now sets the stage for self-destruction. When faced with such failure, discouragement always follows.
There is a cycle of bondage and freedom. It’s marked in history and traced through generations from the beginning of time. It goes something like this:
- From bondage to faith and/or hope
- From faith/hope to courage/determination
- From courage/determination to liberty (reinforced by law)
- From liberty to abundance
- From abundance to complacency
- From complacency to apathy
- From apathy to dependence
- From dependence back into bondage
Scholars believe that you can trace and mark where every culture currently exists in this cycle. I wonder if it must be that way. Is there an opportunity to step outside the circle? Move from abundance to a new path? Has human evolution advanced enough for us to remove the age-old filters and walk in the present truth, undeterred by the chains of the past and the scars of our forefathers?
What would it look like if we jumped off this hamster wheel and chose to move forward? I’d like to see that world.
—Follow G. Anne Bassett on Twitter: @TheSouthernNut
