by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

Growing up, I was hardwired to believe the world was getting better, and would one day resemble a safer, more just, prosperous, and equitable place to live. You know, “… the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” and all that jazz.

When my kids were born I began thinking more deeply on this idea. I still had faith we were getting better, after all, a child born 100 years ago in America could expect to live to about 65. Today, it’s 79. The worlds’ scientists and researchers have created vaccines and other interventions to prevent plagues from ravaging us. The internet has made it possible for a surgeon to guide a lifesaving procedure from thousands of miles away. Human evolution has been a steady march toward the new and improved.

But it seems we aren’t living in a better, safer, more just country. We have extreme political polarization and violence, our democracy is under attack from within, women have lost the hard-won right to control their bodies, our tax dollars are paying for a genocide in Gaza, the American middle class is disappearing as homelessness hits a record high, and our government is making policies that ensure wealth is consolidated upward to fewer and fewer super rich American royals.

All this has left me feeling like I have failed my kids. They’re not safer. They’re not better off financially. They’re not able to buy a home. Many recent college graduates can’t find jobs, and some are carrying $100,000 or more in loan debt. Ever drive south from Foothill down Garey Avenue after 10 p.m.? If so, you know all manner of human suffering is on display. It’s clear we’ve decided people living on the street are throwaways. Just last week, Fox commentator Brian Kilmeade said homeless people should be killed.

Some call self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders a utopian idealist who hates capitalism. I don’t see it that way. I see a scruffy realist, a person who believes health care, a college education, and housing are human rights for all Americans. Imagine that. As Bernie has been repeating for decades, we are the only industrialized nation in the world without universal healthcare for its citizens. And Elon Musk is about to be a trillionaire. Imagine that.

Now that my kids are becoming adults, I’m realizing that my plan to leave them with a better life than mine has failed. And I wonder: have parents always felt this way? Are we living in a particularly fraught and horrible time?

A study published by UK science website IFLScience quickly disabused me of that notion.

“536 CE was a goddamn miserable time to be alive,” IFL reports. “‘It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year,’ study author Michael McCormick, a medieval historian at Harvard, told Science Magazine. This era was grim, not because of bloody wars or ferocious diseases, but due to a number of extreme weather events that led to a widespread famine. Although there are many theories floating around as to why this famine occurred, some of the sturdiest evidence points towards a ‘volcanic winter,’ where ash and dust were thrown into the air from an eruption of a volcano, thereby obscuring the Sun with a ‘mystery cloud.’”

So yeah, apparently 536 wins in the “worst year” category, with famine, extreme weather, and the kicker, a dang “volcanic winter.”

Perspective is a valuable thing.

Could it be that aging and the ever-present knowledge that I am closer to checkout time than ever (who isn’t?) has exacerbated these thoughts of doom and despair? Could this just be a natural state for an older American?

“We found that when looking at all responses across all participants, older adults reported the highest level of well-being compared to all other age groups,” said Susan Charles, professor of psychological science and nursing science at UC Irvine and author of the 2023 study, “Growing old and being old: Emotional well-being across adulthood.” She continued: “They reported the lowest levels of distress (great sadness and anxiety) as well as the lowest level of reported negative emotions (feeling lonely, afraid and upset). They also reported the highest levels of positive emotions (being calm, enthusiastic and cheerful) than younger adults.”

OK, well, I guess it’s just me then.

Maybe leaving a better world for our kids isn’t our job after all. Maybe we just need to get over ourselves and accept that our kids will rise to the occasion and be the change we wanted to see. Or not. It’s not up to us.

The great Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 masterpiece “On Children” captures this vividly:

“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

“On Children” reminds us not to let our hubris fool us into thinking our children are our projects. They are their own projects. Our job is not to shape them in our image, it’s to support them until they’re ready to fly, just like the arrow leaves the bow.

Still, I’m left with nagging dread. I have to hope that “moral universe” is out there somewhere,  and all our kids will live in that world. We certainly don’t seem close at the moment.

But if science has taught us anything, it’s that things could clearly be worse; I am relieved what’s left of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hasn’t yet predicted a volcanic winter. Also, pizza exists. Also, cats being frightened by cucumbers.

So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.