Many moons ago, I was travelling through a beautiful island paradise where I had been warmly welcomed by the locals.  I had jumped straight into a traveller’s brochure and was living the dream.  Then we turned a corner and it hit me like a brick wall.  An emotional brick wall.  There was a huge advertising board promoting a new residential building complex which could have come straight from the suburbs of any developed city.  A sadness engulfed me as I mentally decided this potential development would completely ruin this unspoilt, natural beauty I was in the midst of enjoying.  An innocent beauty many people from developed city landscapes longed for.

As we continued along the road, marvelling at the lush rainforest and happy, thriving local communities around us, the billboard kept re-projecting itself at me.

I questioned why it upset me so much.  I acknowledged my want to protect this serenity for others to enjoy, and the feeling that change would bring a negative outcome, but to feel so distraught was perplexing.

While realising it was more the feeling of helplessness which was upsetting me, another revelation occurred: it wasn’t really about protecting, it was about controlling what these communities could do.

Who was I to question whether another being has the right to experience what I have had, let alone restrict their experience by telling them to keep it raw?

Many people experience growth and plenty, convenience and fortune, take a brief visit to less developed countries for emotional and mental rebalancing, then return to the conveniences of ‘civilisation’.  When we feel a threat approaching our therapy source, we try to control it.

Previous encounters have given some people insight into what can follow mass development after its arrival into smaller communities.  We can find ourselves subconsciously using that insight to create a fear-based projection that the same will happen to others.  Instead of reconnecting with our own experience and bringing awareness to a situation, we fully block others from any opportunity to learn as we did.

Perspective and advice, offered from a place of compassion, bring much greater growth than any transmission of fear.

Because some of us have transitioned through a door of experience and can look back, it doesn’t certify us to stop others going through their own door.  How are people supposed to learn from experience if it is only a reality for some?  It would be akin to an adult limiting a child’s every interaction in case one may hurt the child.  How will that child ever learn?

There is nothing to compare against if only one end of a scale is experienced.

This applies to us as a species and universally.

The concept that we have gone too far as a species, irrevocably destroying our planet and humanity, is a popular concept to some.  There are others who believe there is still time to make amends, if we act now.

Wanting to retreat to an existence prior to all advances in technology, industry and agriculture to live a very simple life free from modern complexities may feel like an option but it’s fundamentally unrealistic.  Our species has evolved beyond that, physically, mentally and emotionally.

By looking back, unregretful and with wisdom, at what we have gone through we take insight with us as we move forward.  Through processing our lessons and experiences, we will enable and empower ourselves to continue with momentum and further growth.

We need to maintain momentum or we will stagnate.

Trying to return to how we were prior to a particular event would be admitting that we have never learnt from it, that there was no lesson at all. We need to recognise that we did experience that moment for a reason.

Explained succinctly in the iconic ‘Back to the Future’ films, returning to before an event, and trying to change what happened, doesn’t bode well or ‘solve’ anything.  Other unforeseen factors create a different future and conjure other lessons for us.

Many of us are aware that, as individuals, we learn from our challenges and continue forward with our new-found knowledge.  It is time to embrace all that knowledge we have accumulated from our individual and communal experiences and utilise it to enhance what we have, not discard what we have learnt on the journey here.  We will continue to move on with insight and perspective which we can offer to share, but not enforce on other.  It is time to apply that on a universal level and use it to help all beings transition through the latest shift that is occurring.  A shift which requires that we all come together as one and bring our experiences to the table.  We are learning and growing as one entity.

Our experiences enable us to teach as well as learn.

This is why we must allow others their version of experiences we may have had.  Another’s experience will not unfold as ours because it will be individual to them.  Even if we feel we didn’t enjoy or benefit from a particular moment of our journey, it happened and we still obtained knowledge and insight from it.  This puts us in a wonderful position to share what we have learnt and guide another but never control, dictate or steer their path.  It is their journey with personal lessons to grow from.  We have had, and will continue to have, ours.