Dear Jessica Brennan,
I was looking at some old photographs of your great, great, great, grandfather and thinking about how neither of us ever met him of course, but I am sure he wondered at some point in his life about us. The unnamed ghosts of a future generation.
As I see it, every generation tries to make a better tomorrow for the next. The post-war generation created the baby boomer generation who created GenY and some X I guess, and so it goes. But even before the Baby Boomers, (yes there was life on planet Earth prior to Boomers) there were ancestors striving and struggling to make a better life for future generations. Just as we are trying to protect the environment and human rights for our kids, they too were setting a path that would be on firm-footing for babies that would not be born in their lifetime. For people like us.
When I think of future generations, sometimes I feel afraid for them. The acceleration of what we will tolerate now even compared to what shocked us twenty years ago, frightens me. What will our children’s children’s children be dealing with? What will this world look like then?
Lately though, I have been thinking less about a distant tomorrow and more about the fact that I/we are all the future generation of our ancestors. Today, we are the embodiment of their dreams, and while we cannot control what a generation 200 years from now will do with our hope, we can honour the aspirations of the ancients of love who fought hard and did without, in order to give us a better world. This world. Are we living up to those dreams that were made up largely of struggle and sacrifice? Dreams that were seeded with optimistic expectation and watered with tears?
I wonder what that grandpa would think of us now.
Love Mum,
xo
