A graduation apology
Last Sunday I was at a high school graduation party for a young gentleman who seemingly has a very bright future. He is to attend a highly regarded nearby liberal arts college on a music scholarship in the fall. He is, of course, intelligent with well-off parents. He is tall, blond and handsome. Outside of some tragic occurrence in his life, he has everything to look forward to, except ... the future.
It's a future not of his doing. It's a future that more and more is becoming the dread of many of my generation — those of us born just after World War II with, in fact, everything to look forward to. Not that we should personally dread it for we will not live to see it. But it is a future that we helped create, and it is a future that will make life much more difficult for him and his progeny than the one we have enjoyed.
It is a future of unsustainable world population; a future of ever more limited resources, including water, arable land, raw materials and the cheap source of fuel, oil, on which our current civilization is based; a future of degraded environment; a future in which we will of necessity be forced to replace our entire growth and fossil-fuel based economic system with one yet to be determined; a future of climate change unprecedented in human history.
At the party I alluded to these challenges to the proud father of the recent graduate and now I regret I did, for a graduation party is hardly the place to throw a wet blanket over joyous proceedings. Not that he is unaware of these things, it's just that his concerns are currently about whether his son will get a job coming out of college as well as for his two younger daughters who have yet to become high school graduates.
Most people regard graduations as occasions to celebrate. Regrettably I'm beginning to see them more as the end of the proverbial plank. The recent graduate stands with his toes over the edge. He must jump into an ocean that is slowly warming, acidifying and filled more and more with the detritus of our over-consumptive and wasteful society.
I want to congratulate this graduate yet apologize to him at the same time for the crimes that I and the others in my generation have committed against his future. And because of him and his fellow graduates and all their siblings I know I must work even harder in the decades I have left to right the wrongs I have committed against that future.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
It's a future not of his doing. It's a future that more and more is becoming the dread of many of my generation — those of us born just after World War II with, in fact, everything to look forward to. Not that we should personally dread it for we will not live to see it. But it is a future that we helped create, and it is a future that will make life much more difficult for him and his progeny than the one we have enjoyed.
It is a future of unsustainable world population; a future of ever more limited resources, including water, arable land, raw materials and the cheap source of fuel, oil, on which our current civilization is based; a future of degraded environment; a future in which we will of necessity be forced to replace our entire growth and fossil-fuel based economic system with one yet to be determined; a future of climate change unprecedented in human history.
At the party I alluded to these challenges to the proud father of the recent graduate and now I regret I did, for a graduation party is hardly the place to throw a wet blanket over joyous proceedings. Not that he is unaware of these things, it's just that his concerns are currently about whether his son will get a job coming out of college as well as for his two younger daughters who have yet to become high school graduates.
Most people regard graduations as occasions to celebrate. Regrettably I'm beginning to see them more as the end of the proverbial plank. The recent graduate stands with his toes over the edge. He must jump into an ocean that is slowly warming, acidifying and filled more and more with the detritus of our over-consumptive and wasteful society.
I want to congratulate this graduate yet apologize to him at the same time for the crimes that I and the others in my generation have committed against his future. And because of him and his fellow graduates and all their siblings I know I must work even harder in the decades I have left to right the wrongs I have committed against that future.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Labels: high school graduation
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home