The dreams of yesterday are the eyes of tomorrow.
Taking a simplistic view I will say that the city of tomorrow is shaped by the children of today, and today’s children are shaped by the adults. So all of us are the architects of our future.
Dylan Thomas saw the Ugly and the lovely in Swansea town long before it was bombed in WW2. Through little boy’s eyes, he looked out through bedroom windows and saw the ugly on one side and the lovely on the other.
We continue to share the ugly and the lovely view – in fact we are all just that – both ugly and lovely – We are complex.
When I ask people to look out their windows, and what do they see? I am asking for a perspective on life. Two people might see different things, and what they say, reveals as much about them as about what is out there.
Swansea City centre was shaped by the Second World War – it was bombed during the Blitz, by the Luftwaffe under the command of Adolf Hitler.
Hitler as a child was obsessed with ‘Parsifal’ – the blameless fool, the champion of the Holy Grail, and the healer of the wounded King. And as the leader of the Third Reich the image of Parsifal and the image of the Fuhrer became enmeshed.
The children of today walk down Swansea Kingsway, rebuilt after the war – Were it not for Hitler their feet would be treading on different ground and their eyes would perceive different sites.
The psychologist Karl Jung wrote about many complexes; he believed it perfectly normal to have ‘complexes’, because everyone has emotional experiences that affect the psyche. These experiences can bring comfort, and they also bring pain: Hitler’s father was brutal to him, and like Parsifal, he lost his father at an early age, Jung reacted to his father’s views, and Dylan Thomas longed for his father’s approval.
The experiences of these men as children shaped their later work; they shaped the world as we know it.
It is our views that shape the world; the planners and the politicians make decisions about our cities, but what were they thinking long before they rose to those positions? And what will our children think when they take their place?
So when you look out of your window, what do you see? Is it ugly or is it lovely? The way you see the world is the way it is – change your view, then your experience will change too.
Apparently the Opera ‘Parsifal’ by Wagner was conceived on a Good-Friday.
On Easter Sunday children all over Wales will be searching for Easter Eggs. The eggs are a symbol or a promise of ‘new birth’, the festival became a Christian one; celebrating the resurrection of Christ, but its origin was pagan; coming from Germany and the Goddess ‘Eostra’, the goddess of renewal and fertility, her symbol was the Hare.
So why not take a look out of a window over the holiday, and consider your view?
CIVIC 