About the instability of things

Living during what could easily be the end of the longest era of (more or less) global stability has an awful lot of things to do with people either not realizing it, or enjoying the collapse of things far too much.

To the first ones: Do you remember this proverb about setting things free? This little saying trying to convince you to let go of the things your heart cares for, just to see if they come back on their own? I have always wondered about this and have never understood why I was supposed to let go of something I cared for so much only to test it. What if it wanted to come back but got lost? What if it got hurt? What if it didn‘t know if I even wanted to have it back and sometimes came around at night to look through a window and see me reading and having a cup of tea and it was sure about me not ever thinking about it?
Lately, however, I also noticed that this understanding stems from an experience of stability that might have been an illusion all along. It is one that my parents as having grown up in the second half of the 20th century in a western country have experienced, and it shows. Growing up during the cold war also meant growing up in a stable setting. You knew how the situation was and you knew what kind of escalation to hope for not to happen. Then, you suddenly were lucky enough to see the reuniting of Europe and the opening of borders closed for so long and the problems seemed solved. You could just live on and be convinced that every day at the office would feel just like the other, the only exceptions being a Christmas party. You actually began to think in decades. By the time you had your first job, you also had to come up with a retirement plan to know exactly in what kind of garden you could eventually wait for the end.

For us being young right now, nothing is that reliable anymore.
I am far beyond my first job, and I still don‘t have a retirement plan, because many savings, or money that could have been saved, have been used to survive the pandemic leaving me without an income as a teacher. I also don‘t think in decades anymore, since I don‘t know which places can even be still in reach or still whole when I am 40 or even 50.

So, when letting things go, I find it hart to expect them to come back. I just see so many traps in this world to swallow words that were so needed to be said and steps that were so needed to be taken. In the reality of trying to get your life under control in the 21 first century, a pandemic can suddenly isolate you from the most important people for years while you cannot be sure who is still gonna be alive afterwards. And in the middle of all this, there is a war in Europe and against Europe starting. So far it is only in Ukraine, but we have to be aware that it is a war against European values and institutions. It is also a war against us, attacking all of us would just have been too risky. And this war is breaking my heart. It is breaking my heart, because on several levels I am involved personally, but the details don‘t belong here yet. And right after the death and destruction, it is also causing disruption. A disruption I find difficult to grasp. For example, I also cried when the train connection between Helsinki and St. Petersburg was cancelled. I see why this is necessary right now, but it just shows how a war like this can wipe places and people of the map within our heads. I have people I am not sure when or if I will ever see them again. I have all my life counted on visiting places that are now off limits. This is also a level of Dystopia that is heartbreaking.
It rips holes into our map of then world.

The little proverb that my parents presented when I was crying over a boy as a teenager only leaves me wondering.

How do you hope for things to come back if country borders are closed?
How do you hope for things to come back if the roads have been torn apart?
Who comes back after being hit by a bomb?

This proverb does not work in Dystopia.
In Dystopia, hands cling on to the few good things, and it is their right.