Before Easter, my mother had a very unpleasant experience when she went to my father’s cemetery and saw that his picture was painted. Someone had drawn long eyelashes, painted his lips and outlined his eyebrows well. I tried to calm her down with a joke but it didn’t work, I risked falling into the category of those who show disrespect and lack of judgement in places you wouldn’t even think of.
I debated with my mother about the lack of education of many people, about the rebellious attitude misunderstood, about the (un)common sense of those who spoil the pictures on the cemetery crosses.
A few days later, I read a BBC News article about the vandalism of a 230-year-old statue in Worchester, UK. The statue depicting the Roman Naiad Sabrina had been scrawled with blue on her face, torso, arms.
At the same time, in the church of Sainte-Madeleine in Angers, France, writes Le Figaro, statues were beheaded, crosses broken, the altar destroyed with a fury, an indescribable indifference.
All this took place in just a few days in April 2023.
Returning to the lands of the Middle East, we see how various people give their opinions on TV or in the press about the irrelevance in a man’s life of the works of great writers or even books in general.
What is relevant, according to a young Romanian who made a lot of money quickly (never mind the name)? Doing well, being financially successful.
Have those who still defend some values really become so obsolete?
Doesn’t tradition, the values of the past, art, literature, principles, teaching, matter at all? I understand that the world is changing, that we need to adapt, to be flexible, to transform our way of thinking.
But if we no longer have any landmarks, if we demolish everything, we run the risk of being like the ship that no longer has a compass or a lighthouse, but is drifting.