How Long Do We Carry the Past?
Living in Hungary also made me think about how much of our present behaviour is fuelled by the past.
When people distrust even trustworthy people because they assume there must always be a hidden agenda, is it not time for change?
When people remain angry about land, wars, borders and rights from one hundred or three hundred years ago and talk about these events as though they personally happened yesterday, is it not time for change?
Sometimes it felt as though people were living their grandparents’ wars inside their own heads.
History matters.
Of course it matters.
But there is a difference between understanding history and continuing to live inside it.
I remember my nagymama talking about how little power ordinary people had during her lifetime. They feared every move they made. They knew people could simply disappear if they stood up to the ÁVH, the state security police, or challenged powerful leaders.
They learned to follow the rules.
Keep their heads down.
Obey.
Survive.
I often heard people my age say, I would have fought. I would have tried to save everyone. I would have stood up.
Would you?
Looking backward, with all the information we have access to now, with the viewpoints of other countries and generations of hindsight, it is easy to say.
My grandparents were not stupid people.
They were beaten down into submission.
After surviving war, occupation and political terror, they did not necessarily have another revolution left inside them.
They were trying to survive.
They found their tiny pleasures in food, children, family and whatever normality they could create.
Sometimes that was all they could aspire to.
And I think there are two ways a country can go from there.
We can hold onto the hurt, decide life has always been unfair and continue fuelling change through resentment and hatred of others.
Or we can remember what happened, learn from it, and create something new.
We Don’t Need to Hate Someone Else to Love Hungary
When I originally wrote this, I believed there also needed to be a distinct separation between government and religious belief.
I still believe strongly in the separation of church and state.
We must be Hungarian first, regardless of who thinks they are somehow more Hungarian than the next person.
The same applies anywhere.
Religion should not be used as a tool to separate people into those who supposedly belong and those who do not.
At the time, I imagined what Earth might look like without religion at all.
No borders inside our minds.
Just humans.
People trying to survive, raise families, find happiness and make sure others are treated fairly.
I couldn’t understand why we needed religion to tell us how to behave.
Can we not behave just because?
Can we not be loving toward each other simply because it is the right thing to do?
Do we really need a set of laws telling us that if we don’t behave properly, we will burn in hell?
I considered myself as good as they come, and I didn’t go to church. My ties to Christianity were mostly family traditions—rituals that helped us mark time and create memories.
I believed in people.
Living people.
And yet, even then, there was something else there.
I wrote that if someone asked me to join a cult that believed in positive energy, the power of thought and believing in ourselves, I would probably join in an instant.
Apparently, I was searching for something too.
I just didn’t call it God.
Be the Example
I wanted to help change things simply by being an example of what life could look like if we changed our opinions about strangers.
Because I have been a stranger.
I have been a stranger in Canada.
I have been a stranger in France.
And somehow, even with Hungarian blood running through me, I have been a stranger in Hungary.
Perhaps that is why I don’t feel that I completely belong to any one country, yet somehow I have found connections and homes in all three.
People are remarkably similar.
They want to be loved.
They want their children to be safe.
They want meaningful work.
They want enough money to live.
They want people around them they can trust.
They want to matter.
Maybe positive change starts there.
Not with another political slogan.
Not with another enemy.
Not with another group of people we’re supposed to blame for everything that has gone wrong.
Maybe we need independent thinkers who embrace technology, ecology, education and the future while still understanding where we came from.
Maybe we need young people willing to challenge the old power structures and give some power back to ordinary people.
We are not children who need to be guided through every aspect of our lives.
We need the freedom to make choices about our own lives—how we live, whom we love, whether we marry, and how many children we want to have.
At the time, I joked that if I created a political party, I would call it The New Fidesz Party—fresh blood, fresh ideas, young people who might actually change the world.
Maybe we need a little anarchy now and then.
Not destruction.
Just enough disruption to break apart old ways of thinking.
I wrote that I was searching for a hero.
But perhaps I had that part wrong too.
Perhaps, as teachers, parents and ordinary people, our job is to spark the flame early inside many people.
One of them might become a great leader.
The rest of them might simply become good human beings.
And maybe that matters even more.
A Note From Me Today
I wrote the original version of this many years ago, when I was certain that I did not believe in God in any traditional religious sense—a spirit on a cloud, watching and judging us all.
Today, I believe in God.
I even found a nice church.
That surprised me too.
What changed wasn’t my questioning mind. I still question everything. What changed was my understanding of what believing in God could actually mean.
What is interesting is that I haven’t abandoned the questions that made me reject religion in the first place. I still have the questioning mind I thought prevented me from believing. If anything, I question more.
I still believe church and state should remain separate. I still don’t believe one religion owns God, morality or the truth. And I certainly don’t believe we need the threat of hell to make us behave like decent human beings.
What changed was my understanding of God.
Back then, I wrote about the cosmos, karma, positive energy, the power of thought and my belief that somehow there had to be something more. I believed deeply in things I couldn’t prove while simultaneously insisting I didn’t believe in God.
Funny how that works.
Maybe I wasn’t as far away from faith as I thought.
Today, I can believe in God without surrendering my questioning mind. I don’t need to have all the answers. In fact, I am increasingly comfortable admitting that none of us really knows very much at all.
The older I get, the more I understand how little I know.
But one belief has survived every version of me:
Be kind. Treat people with dignity. Question what you are told. Think for yourself. And leave the world a little better than you found it.
Whether that moral compass comes from God, our upbringing, our conscience, the universe, or some combination of all of them, perhaps we don’t have to agree.
We just have to use it.
