By Don Harrison
You may never have said it aloud, but it’s crossed your mind:
“I’m glad I won’t be around …
A tempting consolation when things are happening that we have no control over — but it’s a selfish cop-out. True, we won’t be around, but our kids will — and their kids and their friends and contemporaries.
We won’t have to deal with it, but they will. And the mess facing them is our mess. You might insist that you had nothing to do with how things are turning out — but if not us, who?
Just as we inherited what prior generations dumped on us, those who follow us — adding their own foul-ups, I’m sure — will have to deal with what we’ve left them.
The world is astonishingly different from what it was when we were kids — in some ways good, in others not so good. Who’s responsible for these monumental changes? Those of us who have lived through them.
Each has an impact
Each of us has had some impact on the world we are leaving to those coming after us. It may have been something we created — a thing or an idea or an attitude.
Something we said or did that influenced others. Maybe something we didn’t say or do — but should have.
Some of us have made a much more visible impact than others, but no matter how seemingly insignificant, what we said and did will resound long after we’re gone.
Like any other concept, this theory of common responsibility can be carried to extremes.
At a religious service we attended with our kids a few days after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, the clergyman intoned, “We are all responsible for Robert Kennedy’s death.”
‘Didn’t do it,’ she wept. One of our daughters, 8 at the time, burst into tears.
“I didn’t kill Robert Kennedy,” she wept.
As far as I know, she has stayed away from clergymen ever since, which is OK with me.
Yet, his point was well taken. To varying degrees, we are all responsible for the world we live in — abuses, as well as advances — and for the world we are leaving to those coming after us.
Even though we won’t be around…
For which I am grateful.
There — I’ve said it.