The promised land

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Apart from the biblical meaning of the promised land, there are many aspects of our wishes and desires that constitute our own, personal promised land…

That personal promised land is more common than we might think. When we are very young, the promised land is when we can walk. Later it is that time that we are allowed to do things on our own. As teenagers the promised land may be that time when we pass our drivers test and obtain a drivers license; and finally having that drivers license it opens the world to us!

During our lives there are those wishes and desires we may cherish that, each in their own right, become our promised land. At least for a while. And after that we have either reached our personal promised land, or we have moved on and are now desiring something different.
For instance when we may have wished for a grand mansion to live and enjoy and to raise our family in. At some point in our lives we may come to the realization that we are better served with a smaller, more modest abode. Sometimes even in a different setting; more quiet, more culturally stimulating, or perhaps in a setting where we are surrounded by like-minded people…

Throughout history there have also been times when people started moving from one place to another in (family)groups; sometimes over quite expansive distances. Often driven by needs rather than desires, and looking for a place where they would have a better chance to not just survive, but also thrive.
They would bring the culture they were raise in with them, which often became an instigation for new things, new perspectives in the places they ended up settling in.

In other words, the fact that they moved to their ‘promised land’ benefited not only them, but it advanced the whole area they traveled to.

And yet, chances are that even in those days they were met with strong opposition by those that didn’t understand their language, their behavior, and their way sin general. The argument that may well have been used as a ‘catch-all’ reason to oppose those new-comers could have been that they were taking away the food as they were hunting the same grounds, or tried their hands at agriculture in the same area where others had been living for generations…

Looking at the world of today, nothing much has changed.
We, who have lived here for generations, still try and deny the ‘new-comers’ their ‘promised land’; and we are doing so from the same fear-based thoughts and reasons that have been used throughout the ages.

Perhaps it is time to focus on our own wishes and desires, to reach for our own, personal promised land, benefiting from the newness that new perspectives bring as others come to join in that place we know so well.
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