I walked into a dark room and waited for the light to form outlines around the objects in the room. I was thinking that if I sat there long enough that my eyes would adjust and I could make out faint lines around the objects in the room. I waited and waited there but no colors appeared instead just black, only black…
I thought about a story an art director from Japan was telling me some time ago. We were working on a calendar together. When he was a child growing up, Japan was still very closed to outside media in fact it was the early sixties before they had their first live broadcast from the United States. Hard to believe it now with live images streaming in for all over the globe.
He said it was a really big deal for them when it happened. He was in early grade school and they had been talking about in class for a month. There were announcements all over Japan about this huge event. Everyone was so excited, especially him because he had been chosen in his school to turn on the TV for the broadcast, He was so thrilled to be chosen from his class to given this honor. They all gathered in the auditorium and waited for the time to turn on the broadcast.
As they all sat waiting for the very first images to show up the TV flickered and rolled. A Sweaty smoking American appeared on the screen and announced… What came instead was the unthinkable…. Pandora’s box was now open and the world would never be the same.
I wondered about this if it could be true so I did a little fact checking. In 1958 only ten percent of the households in America had Television. On November 22nd 1963 there was planned a prerecorded statement from the President of the United States to the Japanese people. On the very afternoon of his assassination, networks planned the first trans-Pacific telecast -- a pre-recorded segment of President Kennedy offering his greetings to the Japanese people…Instead of the greeting they received news of the tragic events unfolding.
Hard to believe now days when we get live broadcast from planets in our solar system, When Daly tweets of news around the world are just as routine as a cup of coffee. I can see the parallel between his story and Pandora’s box. I see the fear of trying something new, trying something unexpected .You might fail miserably, but maybe you just might stumble on something new…. and if you always do the same old thing and never open the box all of those scary wonderful things might never find there way out…. I went back into the dark room and closed the door. It was still so black, but this time my eyes saw color.
When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Epimetheus, Prometheus' brother. With her, Pandora was given a beautiful container, which she was not to open under any circumstance. Impelled by her curiosity given to her by the gods, Pandora opened it, and all evil contained therein escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to close the container, but the whole contents had escaped, except for one thing that lay at the bottom, which was the angel of Hope named Astrea.
