A Letter to Future Generations

Dear future generations,

As I write this, I am sitting on my terrace in my apartment complex listening to the birds singing on an early November day. It is 73 degrees outside, when just over a week ago we were getting 6 inches of snow. This has been one of the worst hurricane seasons on record, and wildfires have been burning across Australia and the western United States since the beginning of the year. With millions of acres of land and millions of animal lives lost. In March a global pandemic hit and much of the world shut down for months. Tens of millions have contracted the virus and over 1.25 million have died in less than 8 months. In the US alone there are almost 10 million cases and over 240,000 deaths. There have been nationwide protests since May in response to the centuries-long systemic racism that has entrenched people of color in this country in a no-win battle to just live their lives in peace.

The president of the US at the moment is Donald Trump. He has been in office for almost 4 years and without going into painful detail the country is seemingly in the worst position it has ever been in. We are poised for a new president and are awaiting the final vote count to elect Joe Biden as president and Kamala Harris as Vice President. To say having Kamala Harris as the Vice President of the United States is historic feels like the understatement not just of this tumultuous year, but of this burgeoning century. She would be the first woman of color, the first Black person, the first South Asian to be elected to that office.

This is a very condensed version of what is happening in our country and world.

I am looking out across the expanse of a parking lot at a small green hill with towering oak trees, whose leaves are glinting gold in the late morning sun. A young boxelder tree sits just over our tiny terrace fence. It is completely bare, sans a few dead leaves and an abandoned goldfinch nest. In the summer that nest was full of eggs and we would watch mama bird fly off and bring back twigs and pine needles to ensure its steady construction. The hatchlings would chirp in anticipation of mama bird swooping in with breakfast. The birds grew bigger and stronger and by September they, and mama bird, had flown to horizons too high for us to see. Fall in New England is nature’s way of reminding us that all things change.

The leaves and trees go from full, lush green, to red and purple, then orange and yellow, then brown and eventually fall to create a kaleidoscope of oak, mulberry, hickory, birch, sycamore, and maple terra firma that crunches when walked upon. This could seem sad. The dying. Yet, in the dark, frigid way of winter, nature is still present. There is no need to be crestfallen. The work of life is being done in time, the snow will melt, the sun will rise high enough to nourish the plants and trees, the animals will emerge from their hibernation, the buds will unfold into leaves, and life will begin anew.

This past year has been the darkest of winters in my lifetime. So much seems to be dying, yet I know that change is present. Transformation is present. Faith is present. Resilience is present. And yes, hope is ever-present.

I sit here in the midst of the evolution. Slow, painful, continuous. You sit in the evolved place. Still changing, transforming, unfolding. Your place is what I picture now, as I watch another gold leaf gently tumble to the waiting ground below, settling in its final resting place, I see you watching a leaf fall graciously from a tree, the wind guiding it down, until, after a long winter, the buds begin unfolding again.

What will you tell younger generations, some not even born yet, about this time in our lives?