Someday I'll tell my children about what it was like before we could rewind the TV. They'll ask how we survived when we had to choose between using either the phone or the internet, both of which were only available within the confines of our homes. I imagine their looks of mixed confusion and admiration when I explain that people could once navigate using maps that didn't talk back or automatically zoom in on your destination. They won't ever know what it's like to not be able to fit the entire world in their pockets--to hold the entire universe in the palms of their hands.
I can't wait to tell them about travelling too, about all the lives you can't live through a screen. Hiking up hills and mountains, fractured rainbows falling through stained glass windows in the breathtaking beautiful churches, the richness and complexity of Chianti Classico, sitting around a table where everyone laughs in the same language; these are the experiences I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. Of course the next generation of travelers will scoff that it took 8 hours and $800+ to reach Europe from the East Coast. Within their lifetimes, they'll be able to make that trans-Atlantic trip in the time it takes us to make a connection. They'll jaunt off to Australia for the weekend. I do envy them that.
I hope we'll travel together to Syria and the Middle East and visit restored museums and eat in restaurants and make new friends there. I hope we'll be awe-struck by treasures as old as (older than?) civilization. I pray that there will come a time when war and terror will be discussed only in the past tense.
I worry for the Earth and whether we will find a sustainable way to power our lives on our finite, beautiful little planet. I hope that they will have hindsight advantage, left wondering at why we didn't find the solutions sooner, it was so obvious, after all. Although I've always wanted a beach house, I hope that my hometown does not become ocean-front property anytime soon.
Like me, I hope they'll count Henry David Thoreau among their dearest friends. When they are standing in front of a painting or piece of sculpture, I hope they listen for history's whispers, seeping into the air through the centuries. I hope they feel the thrill of looking Michelangelo or Bach or Cicero straight in the eyes, across millennia, engaging in that eternal human conversation that defies all the rules of space and time.
They'll read Harry Potter as one of the classics. And when giving unsolicited advice, as parents always do, I'll tell them, echoing the words of a wise man, that the moment will arrive to decide between doing what is right and doing what is easy. I'll tell them that they're sure to stumble along the way, but that I hope their balance always comes out on the side of the right.
I'll tell them that excuses are cheap, but hard work is precious. That honesty, sincerity, compassion and generosity are primary values absolutely vital to the living of a good life right now, in the present, not an afterthought that we can consider later. By waiting for later to have more time or money or happiness to share some with others, we find paradoxically that we can never have enough. Better to be content with what we have. Better to decide now that what we have is enough. Better to believe that we don't have to to wait for the far off future. Better to start today.
In this, above all, I hope that my actions will always speak infinitely louder than my words.
In this, above all, I hope that my actions will always speak infinitely louder than my words.
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