He said, “I have reached the stage in life when I am asking: What do I want to do with the time remaining?”
A solicitation email for an online archive warned of our “cultural disappearing act” describing the erasure of books and references that include material no longer politically popular.
I was born on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, “a date that will live in infamy.” It was infamous because one country attacked another without cause.
I have been incredibly lucky to live in this country during an amazing period. A time when we seemed to consciously work toward “a more perfect union.” A time when the policeman was our friend. A time when a family could live well enough with one wage earner. A time when education intended to educate not indoctrinate. A time when there were communities with a sea of open land between them. A a time when childhood was safe, when we knew right from wrong and knew friends from enemies.
Did we make mistakes? You bet. Did we leave some folks behind? We did. Were we less than perfect? Indeed. Were there moments when folks who were haters and troublemakers grabbed the mic? Yes.
None of that eradicated the good; it stood beside what was good waiting to be properly addressed. The small number of Americans who lived well in the 19th century multiplied in the 20th. The belief in providing a social safety net broadened. Lessons were learned about how to create a more open economy with opportunities for more people. With a more vibrant economy, more rights were afforded. That was in my lifetime. I didn’t read about it; I watched it unfold.
All at once, I knew what I wanted to do—no matter how much time I had remaining. I wanted to preserve and protect our land, our history, our lives, and if not our way of life, then a clear record of it.
Walking out my front door, a friend called over his shoulder, “No one cares about ethics anymore.”
In a telephone conversation, another friend mused, “It’s not that hard. We could get there if each person would just do their job.”
With all my heart, I hope the first friend is absolutely wrong and the second is perfectly correct. Even if our job is as simple as tightening bolts, if we do not do it, the door flies off the plane in mid-air, frightening and endangering everyone. Ethics is just the articulation of the fair and decent way to conduct ourselves and treat one another. If we no longer care, then might makes right, money buys decisions—in short, the bully rules the playground.
We have reached a turn in the road, a new era, a different time. We stand on the brink. What will we take with us to light our steps? What will we leave behind untouched for those who come after us? What will we preserve and protect?
This country began in division. This country had to fight to become a country. Then as now, there were potential rewards and certain consequences. Ben Franklin said, “We hang together, or we shall certainly hang separately.”
Then as now, there were different opinions about what was worth doing and how we should be permitted to do it. They were just words on paper:
- “In order to form a more perfect union…”
- The people shall have “inalienable rights.”
- Three equal branches of government.
We were born in conflict and shaped in a sea of conflicting words. Once again, we live in difficult times. We suspect one another and misunderstand one another, and that is too bad. It is enervating. It literally saps our civic energy and our tradition of a civil society. It quite literally confounds our ability to think.
It is amazing how readily we reduce people and ideas to sound bites and slogans. It is sad because it will not meet the complex situations before us. One simple, three-word, repetitive response to varying situations cannot fail to do some good and some evil.
All of a sudden, we are equally ready to dismiss people: He is so smart; she is a dummy. Really? My father was a brilliant scientist and a dad full of good advice who could not open a pickle jar. He would hand it to my mom. He was a strikingly good pianist who could not go on a picnic because he could not cope with the difficulties of preparing or consuming food in the great outdoors. So, was my father smart or a dummy? It is more nuanced and truer that we are all smart in some way and no one is smart in every way.
We are more comfortable reducing big, sprawling arguments to a binary choice, but then we lose the ability to remember why we decided the way we did. I worked with a pal fashioning an explanation of a problematic situation.
He said, “Keep it short and simple.”
I said, “But we have to say this, explain that, and not overlook this other.”
He said, “You do and you lose the audience. You have to hand it to Trump; he knows how to message.”
Do I? Do I have to hand it to Trump? This country handed a great deal to Trump, and where are we? The truth: We don’t know. So many say so often, “Maybe it will all work out.” The sad, crippling truth is that we have lost our ability to know where we are. That is what we need back: our ability to know.
Recently my life was threatened, and, far worse, the lives of my grandchildren. I presume it is for what I write since the threat came through the newspaper. Nonetheless, with the time left, I choose to write. I choose to preserve and protect in words that which we may lose in fact.
