Dear son:
The COVID-19 pandemic, and accompanying economic disaster, have made me think a lot about your future.
I believe that you will grow up in a tougher, meaner world than I have. It’s possible that survival, and not just self-actualization, will be the challenge that you face. Do not let this scare you: We are privileged that survival has not been a problem in my memory, nor my parents'. But people all around the world and across history have spent lifetimes much closer to the edge than we have. They have accepted the challenge and persisted — because that is what life is all about. What alternative, really, is there?
I believe that you will grow up in a tougher, meaner world than I have. It’s possible that survival, and not just self-actualization, will be the challenge that you face. Do not let this scare you: We are privileged that survival has not been a problem in my memory, nor my parents'. But people all around the world and across history have spent lifetimes much closer to the edge than we have. They have accepted the challenge and persisted — because that is what life is all about. What alternative, really, is there?
But I worry. I am a man who has made a living by talking and writing. It’s not made me rich, but for the most part I have been able to provide food and shelter on the income those skills provide. I am not sure such opportunities will be as widely available in the future. And I don’t have the experience, skills or tools to do much else. What can I teach you that will help you, practically, as you grow up and move out into this meaner world?
Your mother reminds me that we are giving you the tools to acquire those skills yourself. You’re smart, inquisitive, an obsessive reader and collector of facts. I could not be prouder of who you have already become. And I think we’ve modeled other values that we hope you’ll take on and carry through life.
Even so, I want to be explicit about the values I hope you embrace.
Your mother reminds me that we are giving you the tools to acquire those skills yourself. You’re smart, inquisitive, an obsessive reader and collector of facts. I could not be prouder of who you have already become. And I think we’ve modeled other values that we hope you’ll take on and carry through life.
Even so, I want to be explicit about the values I hope you embrace.
HONESTY: Telling the truth - even when it has a cost - is good in its own right. But there are practical reasons for embracing honesty as one. To use one, currently pertinent example: Our leaders were not honest - with us, certainly, and perhaps with themselves - about the dangers presented by the coronavirus. That failure to embrace reality, to embrace the truth, and to give that truth to the public, probably made the pandemic wider and more disastrous than it had to be.
Embrace honesty, son. Embrace the truth.
COMPASSION: There is a temptation, during hard times, just to look out for yourself and those closest to you. It’s understandable. Nonetheless, I ask that you look for opportunities to be kindhearted to — and helpful — others. They will need your help at times. And you will need theirs.
This is even true even when you find something detestable or off-putting. We didn’t raise you in the church. I know you’re skeptical of religion. But these verses from Matthew 5 in the Christian Bible have have stuck with me, informed my sense of what I should aspire to, even as my own faith wavered and diminished:
43You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘Hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same?
Other religious traditions — and traditions outside religion — have similar teachings. Like I say: I believe the world you encounter will be a mean place. The temptation will be to let it make you mean in response. I hope with all my heart that you can resist that temptation.
JUSTICE: I think this is a corollary to compassion. Both values recognize the humanity of people other than yourself and those closest to you — and demand, as a result, that you treat them the way you would want to be treated, that you advocate for people who are treated unfairly for any reason. When people are treated unfairly, work to help them be treated fairly.
This is an unjust world, and I suspect that it will only become more so. (Or maybe it’s just that people like us will be more exposed to and subject to its injustices.) Have the courage not to shrug at those injustices, or to take advantage of them, but to be a voice against them.
There is so much more to say about each of these ideas. I don’t think I have defined them well in this writing. I must hope that your mother is right, that you already have the skills to equip yourself with better knowledge and wisdom about what these values mean and entail.
There is so much more to say about each of these ideas. I don’t think I have defined them well in this writing. I must hope that your mother is right, that you already have the skills to equip yourself with better knowledge and wisdom about what these values mean and entail.
A warning: You may find that these values are in tension with each other — that to ensure justice for one person makes it difficult to be compassionate to another, or that compassion to one person makes honesty difficult. I can’t give you a hard-and-fast rule to solve those conundrums — only: Let your conscience be your guide.
I am confident of that conscience, and of your heart. I am sorry that I cannot simply protect you from what is to come, only to prepare you as best I can. I love you, now and always,
Dad
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