I’ve been thinking about
this for some time. I’ve been hesitant though. The main reason I’ve been
delaying is because I’ve had a hard time facing the feelings of grief. The
world isn’t in the same condition it was when I got to be part of it. This
realization, this steady drumbeat of loss, haunts me. It makes facing anyone
hard. I have some shame here, the loss of species, habitat, forests and
ecological security that have happened during my time on Earth, and it leaves
me speechless. I feel some responsibility, both to the Earth, and to future
generations. How can I say anything during such a time of devastation? Yet, I
know I must, I feel a responsibility to speak to the young about what is. I
just don’t know how I am going to do it.
I can feel the losses. I
know that some of the places I wanted to take my daughter to, don’t exist
anymore. The life of the planet has changed. We humans have had an affect. I am
not in denial about any of that. I can feel the impulse to apologize. I know in
someway, that I am culpable. I didn’t die to protect the integrity of the
Earth. I let my vigilance wander. I know it. I am in the first generation of
humans to live with the fact that we humans have wrecked the nest. From that
vantage point I turn towards the young, towards the future, fully acknowledging
how my generation lit fire to the house.
The house might burn down.
There may not be a future. Life may have other plans for humanity. I don’t
know. All I do know, as I face you, the one’s who inherit this mess, this deep
uncertainty, is that I feel a complex amalgam of feelings. I admire the pluck,
imagination, passion and heart fullness, I sense in you. I have a bittersweet feeling, which comes with
handing the baton off to you. I’m proud of you. At the same time, I have a
harder time saying I’m proud of me. I’ve been alive during this whole
historical age of environmental carnage, and I know what you are missing.
The world has changed. I,
and my generation, have affected it. We have had an impact on the environment.
At the same time, perhaps more slowly, the wrecked environment; has had an
affect upon us. Speaking entirely for myself, it has taken me a long time to
learn. I am the Earth; the things that I have been doing to it (despite
protesting and being an environmental activist), I have also been doing to
others, and to myself. The whole of the environment is suffering; nature in all
of its external niches, and nature in all of its internal places. This is what
I have to give you.
The planet groans, as we,
humans, decide if we are ready to grow up. The story of our unfolding Universe
isn’t going to stop with you or me. It will go on. It looks like, in this
moment, the real question is how far along that unfolding trajectory are we,
humans, going to go? Evolving is such an uncertain endeavor.
The response to that
uncertainty lies in the hands of you and future generations (if there are
any). I would not have you facing any
less of a challenge. It may be humanity’s ideal to leave the next generation
more secure, comfortable and likely to survive.
But instead, it appears, that you are being left something less secure
and more uncertain. I don’t like the damage I, and my generation, have created.
On the other hand though, I have to say, you are entering a more overtly uncertain
time in our species life. That uncertainty is perhaps more realistic than I,
and my age-cohor,t were handed. Optimism
met me., uncertainty meets you. Truthfully, I don’t know which of us is more
blessed.
There is another attribute
of this moment I want you to know about. I failed miserably during certain eras
of my life. I believed that I was deficient, because the challenges were beyond
me. My sense of self was in the toilet. All of that misery, I subsequently
learned, was necessary, to make me malleable to learning. It took most of this
lifetime for me to get that the miracle that my life contains, has never been
my doing. I am presently, the happiest I’ve ever been, because this life has
taught me, that what is miraculous about it, is not only not in my control, but
located somewhere beyond my doing. The world is a miracle — despite the doing
of my kind.
Life seems to be in charge.
The miracle of it goes on, despite my insensitivity, maybe even because of it.
At last, I am humbled enough so that I can say, without any irony, “ I don’t
know.” Maybe the life I’m leaving, the one I am passing on to you, isn’t what I
think it is. I have this strange feeling that I should apologize, I know I
blundered badly (as I still am), but I also know, that what I’m passing on has
a life of its own, and might just deliver you to something I couldn’t expect.
Some strange unlikelyhood has carried me to places I didn’t know were possible,
I think it is just as likely to continue for you that way.
Good Luck!
Forgive me!
Don’t forget!
I love you!
And,
Be Yourself!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
For more pieces like this, go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com
(2010 thru 2013) and http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com (2014 on)
To hear archived versions of our radio program Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com
To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of
Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net
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