You're not a stone - you can change

MOVING house forces you to clear out the junk you've been hoarding for decades. I came across a journal I kept in 1997. My colleagues had paid for a ticket for my new wife to join me in Ireland after I had finished a three-week business trip to Austria and England. As I read the reflections of my twenty-something self, I cringed at some of the crap that occupied my thoughts back then.

- ASHLEY GREEN-THOMPSON

But I was also able to think about how we evolve as humans. I remember someone saying, 'You're not a stone, you can change'. Our world is changing so fast it makes a thinking person’s head spin. It’s hard enough keeping up with factual information that should shape one's thinking.

We also have to deal with fake news and the incessant repetition of falsehoods by manipulative politicians and billionaires until the public starts believing them to be the truth. And boy is there a neverending torrent of information to process.

I am grateful for having been exposed to information about life and our coexistence as species on this earth. You wouldn't believe it, but at one point in my life I was a homophobe. It took an evening of deep conversation with a certain Barney Beck that started me on the path to change.