Pay it Forward

It is funny how one thought in one direction can end up in an entirely unanticipated destination. This morning I was journaling and started off recalling my earliest memories of running. I started running with my father who was an early form of “health nut.” He was a health nut before there was such a thing. In the late sixties he was riding a bicycle to work, and was a runner before that. I came to believe this arose from his father dying of a heart attack when far to young. Sometimes I would run along with dad back when I was barely in double digits. He would slow his pace to accommodate my short legs and even shorter breath until I had to stop, and he had to go on. At this point I would walk the mile home alone in a security that most of us would not feel for a ten-year old walking home alone today.

It was a different time to be growing up (to weigh heavily on an overused platitude), especially in a small town. It was a safer world. Our mischief was not the mischief of youths today. Today, the misadventures of too many youths seem to be attempts to establish an adulthood they are not ready for. When I was growing up, my friends and I ran through the woods. We placed dirt clods on busy roads and laughed as cars crushed them. We explored the swamp down the street and often wondered if we could make money by the carving of cypress knees (the fact that none of us had those skills nor knew how to harvest cypress knees was never taken into account).

Not only was our mischief different, our view of authority was different. We respected the police that drove languidly about town. We respected the school principal who was rumored to have a paddle in his desk (complete with holes drilled through the paddle head to ease its passage through air when delivering some deserved punishment). We respected our parents. We argued less with them and listened more. Parents weren’t concerned with being our friends, but being our protectors, our safe havens, our guideposts.

Since I was raised, times have gotten progressively more complicated. I have often wondered if my generation has done justice to those we fostered. I can proudly say that the children my wife and I have raised have a wonderful since of morality, caring, and toughness that they are passing on to their children. But I look at the nation now, and I see a profound inattention to any sort of moral compass.

There seems a hole where that compass should be. A hole whose pang of emptiness is more keenly felt as men of honor in the form of John McCain and George H W Bush pass from our company. Leaders who knew we must work together, who knew that compromise serves the country better than partisan winning. Compromise in governing reflects an inclusive nature, while winning at all cost is anathema to true governance.

Just yesterday, I heard that two state legislatures in a lame duck session were attempting to pass legislation lessening the power of the incoming opposition administration. This is a reflection of our current executive branch of the federal government which rejects the nature of having co-equal branches it serves with in favor of a more dictatorial approach that favors division and disenfranchisement.

We are not the only ones experiencing the rise of hate that has been lurking just below society’s surface. Across the globe, there are nationalist movements afoot similar to a greater or lesser degree than what is happening in the United States. But we cannot address the worlds problems in this area without getting our house in order. We can only be the true leader of the world by example, and not by a fiat bestowed upon our brow by our own hands. We must move from the fringes and recognize that we are a diverse nation that must be addressed as a whole, rather than ruled over by the cudgel of those given electoral control. If in politics we yield to the notion of winners, then we all are ultimately the losers.

The salvation I seek, for me can be found in the manner and times I was raised. There will always be a need for a moral compass. There will always be a need for authority that recognizes duty over power. There will always be a need to understand right and wrong. There will always be a need of those who pay it forward. Our jobs as adults and parents are not done yet.