.My
parents lives, and the world view they developed and shared with many
of their generation, were guided by a kind of critical optimism. They
taught me to question and to speak out: over the years, among all the
books that populated the shelves in my father's study, but on that
one particular shelf where the books destined to our reading – the
daughters' books – sat, there was one title I have not forgotten. A
book called The Right to be Different. I think they also
taught me to be courageous and rather stubborn about what I wanted to
do or be or believed in. And they taught me to ask a lot of
questions about the world and never to accept any authority blindly
(which of course, from my young woman's point of view, eventually
included their own...)
For
any number of reasons, the critical optimism with which they
engaged the world seems harder to sustain today. No,
it is not yet the “end of the world” and yes, the
legacy of their generation, and that of the iconoclastic,
restless and creative “sixties” and those that have
followed in their footsteps have made a difference. Not as
much as my parents - my mother Gertrude, my father Norman, would have
wished. But the issues that are on the agenda today bear the
mark of their dreams and their struggles. Now, we wonder just
what it is we can pass on to our own children, our nieces and
nephews, our students or the young people who look to us
– overtly, explicitly or not – for some clues on how to
proceed ahead, for some bits of our wisdom. Today we are more
suspicious ofready made “truths” and have, as
philosopher Jane Flax once noted, permanently left the “age of
innocence”behind us. We know that no positive outcomes are
guaranteed – for ourselves, our communities, the world – but
that does not justify stepping back, doing “nothing” The
choice we have is, as my parents understood and passed on to us –
certainly the most precious of gifts – is as poet Carolyn
Forché once wrote: “It is
either the beginning or the end / of the world, and the choice is
ourselves / or nothing." Or,
at a perhaps
humbler level, there where our own daily lives unfold ( I would
say) : The only
way
to find meaning in life is to actively engage in making it.
[At: Memorial for Norman Adelman
Children's Outing Association
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
December 2012.]
