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A Future That Never Was

A common theme from both sides of the aisle is that we are saving the future for our children and their children. Are we really? Or is this simply another leap of faith? In our zest for fighting over what is left here on Earth, is there going to be enough left to continue our journey?

It is one of those sticking points with me. Whenever I hear "it's for our children!" or "it's for their future!" The common line that pops into my head is screaming "What kind of future?" Do you envision a wasteland of humanity with scarce pockets of "purity" with others begging to just be fed. Or a Star Trek type of future where the Socialist Utopia is smeared on thick? If your future is just like today then keep on wishing. If your future takes a little bit of all of them then you would be closer to the truth. Although far from any real future, we all are.

In a world that can change with the forming of an app or a Social Media function. The very content and context of speech is changing with every month and every Snapchat. We simply have no clue of any future we are leaving for our children.We could not have told our parents how important Microsoft was, we didn't know. We could not have told our parents that newspapers would go obsolete, we didn't know. We could not have convinced all that plastic would polute the world, we didn't know.

In the same week that we speak of terrorism and wars and who's to blame. We speak of Nation's Leaders coming together to fight an altogether different battle, our Earth. The economy modest and hunger and homelessness spreads. We speak of religions and actions and what the right thing is to do. Our childern see this, we sometimes don't know.

It kind of makes me wonder if we are taking away their future today by the way we are going about it. When these issues and events happen we are painfully ignorant of our history and histories. We are simply passing along bad habits and woeful stereotypes and isms. Something we have yet to filter out of our psyche's and hearts, something that would be easy for a child to do. It is a learned response. It is always a good thing to pass along to family those things that make you who you are. I don't think that that was one of the areas he had in mind though. Religion should flow, there is no room for hatred or closing the doors on new frontiers there.

When I was reading to my nephew many years ago now, He kept asking me what those things were in the book. The corded phone, the VCR, what was ree to reel? "I told him and asked him what would his future look like in fourty years?" "I don't know they haven't invented it yet I guess?" was his answer and one I will always remember.

There were other things that happened this week. We can make our own diamonds and layer things with them, we can make sunlight into oxygen through a manmade leaf. We have come so far with our abitlities, why waste it on fighting about it. We have our guns by our sides to protect our families, yet ignore the rising ocean levels. We worry about the polutants in the air and forget that there is sometimes a need to have that gun. We elect people who say education is the most important thing and then cut off that funding promptly. We wonder why at election times we have so many poor choices.

It seems to me that with those wishes for the future of our children and their children, we made a few promises as well. The promise that they would have a world to begin with. The promise to maybe set foot on a new planet, find a new home. We are leaving them with a promise that there will be enough of this left over that they can do something with it. With our history I hope they can really leave this planet. Not for the things that we did wrong, but from the things we just could not seem to get right.