A little word...
Why must the old be thrown away
when it still works as well today?
Why pay the price to change the frame,
then dress the extra cost as gain?
The older model does the job,
but newer things are dressed to rob—
of sense, of thrift, of what we knew,
all for a brighter shade of new.
We polish buttons, smooth the screen,
and call it progress, sleek and clean.
The bill grows larger, month by month,
but somehow that is called a plus.
Perhaps we simply like the shine,
the newer shape, the brighter line.
We pay much more to feel renewed
for something the old one always did.
And when the newest thing arrives,
we praise the change, we praise the drive—
then quietly, without surprise,
begin to want the next disguise.
The old tool works, or so it seems,
but learning takes more time than dreams.
So rather than admit we’re wrong,
we blame the tool for being long.
“It’s outdated. It’s hard to use.
A newer one would surely do.”
So out it goes, and in comes new,
with polished parts and brighter hue.
We praise the change, we praise the cost,
convinced that nothing has been lost.
But then the shine begins to fade,
and once again we feel betrayed.
We never learned the first one through,
and now we cannot work the new.
So out it goes, and in comes more—
another tool we must explore.
Another manual left unread,
another fault we’ll shift instead.
And round and round the cycle turns:
we blame the tools,
the money burns.
Not every problem needs replacing.
Sometimes the fault is simply—
Could it be we stopped learning?