A short reflection on accepting change

Robert Frost wrote:
“When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now I am old my teachers are the young.
What can’t be molded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go to school to youth to learn the future.”

I wish he had continued this poem to comment on how he ultimately coped with the difficulty of the new lessons. It’s a topic that I struggle with lately. Mature individuals must of course accept that today’s world is more hostile and less gentile. It’s not easy to be pushed into the “cracked and sprung” stage of life in order to maintain social and commercial relevancy in cultural environments that I view as distasteful. But it’s even more difficult to accept that the pace of acceleration from even the most basic historic cultural norms is still accelerating. Sometimes it leaves me absolutely terrified to think about the future and, in fact, the only comfort comes from falling back on one of those now out-of-fashion cultural norms – faith.