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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Daily Cascade
Since my old blog "Everyday Canvas "  became overfilled, here's a new one. This new blog item will continue answering prompts, the same as the old one.
Cool water cascading to low ground
To spread good will and hope all around.
August 26, 2025 at 12:34pm August 26, 2025 at 12:34pm
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Prompt:
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future."
Robert Heinlein
Write about what you think of this quote and/or about what historical event had the most impact on your life.
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I should say the end of World War II that had the most impact on my life, but at the time of the war's ending, I was a baby, so I have no recollection of it. In a roundabout way, however, it did, since it caused my core family to fall apart.
Still, I am more consciously aware of the attack at the towers on 9/11. This I can say easily that it did have an impact, or rather more of a loss of the feeling of safety added to the grief about what happened and the fear of its aftermath. It was the feeling that the USA was not a safe place anymore, although I didn't openly say it and neither did many others.
After 9/11, came strict regulations on travel and on other areas of our lives. For example, at the least, on a personal level, I used to treat airplane travel as an opportunity to read and write, and the planes had become like my personal study room, by then. After 9/11, this and many other things changed greatly. What I could take with me on the plane became minimal, as to books and reference materials, compared to what I could do earlier.
Be that as it may, to ignore what happened, that is--what happened as history, may mean cutting the thread to our past and endangering our future. This is what this quote is pointing to, be it in my lifetime or later.
After all, history is not only a holder of facts and dates. Inside it, history has lessons, triumphs, failures, and wisdom. History shows why nations rise and fall, how cultures grow and transform, and what mistakes humanity has made when blinded by pride, greed, or ignorance.
As the result, any generation, in my lifetime or later, cannot afford to turn its back on that knowledge by trying to erase its own roots. No generation or group of people can prosper if they think the struggles, sacrifices, and achievements of those who came before us are unimportant or are considered as if they never happened.
Also, if people ignore history, they are bound to repeat its errors, such as: wars fought for the wrong reasons, freedoms taken for granted and therefore lost, and societies collapsing under corruption or intolerance. In other words, not paying attention to history can mean repeating the errors of the past by walking blindly into the same pitfalls. After all, we need to keep in mind that the past and the future are inseparable.
So, while we learn that we have inherited a past rich with meaning, we should also aim at a future with brighter more humane possibilities. This is true for my generation and all other generations to come.
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) heard that life is like having your hand in a bucket of water. When you remove your hand, the hole that's left behind is how important you were. Better to focus on the now. It's the only real impact you'll have.
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