Aspire To Look Back With Pride

I wrote this as part of my 37th birthday post in 2022. Today is a sad and dark day, but it seems a fitting day to reshare it.

There are so many different narratives shaping our current social, political, and media discourse. Terms like “Culture War” and “Woke Culture” and the like pervade most aspects of our lives. From work to dating, to simply existing in modern culture. In navigating these, I’ve always been fascinated by the friction between what is comfortable and familiar vs. what is new and a departure from the established.

The process of navigating each new wave of changes – technological, cultural, or otherwise – is daunting. It’s exhausting. And, as a college-educated, heterosexual, middle-class, white male – a lot of these changes ask me to give up power, sacrifice opportunity, or to make changes which are sometimes clear cut and other times seemingly contradictory. I see a lot of friends and my peers struggle with this. Both those who – like me – sit within a traditionally entitled position. But, also, just as commonly those coming from a minority background when they’re, in turn, asked to make changes of their own. While there are plenty of issues that are, to be frank, quite confusing. I’ve had a few revelations in the past years for who I want to be and where I want to take inspiration from. These give me a mental model for navigating topics and issues and – I hope – charting the right course.

87. That’s the age my paternal grandfather passed at. As I was three at the time, I obviously don’t have a deep insight into who he was beyond family histories, the book my Dad wrote about his life, and stories from loved ones. But, there’s a lot I do know about him – and in that capacity he helps me as a lens for charting my own course. He was born in 1900. Three years later the Wright brothers took their first flight. By the time women received the right to vote in the US, he was 20 years old, had served as part of the Army Air Corps, survived the first World War and the Spanish Flu.

By the time he was 50, he’d made it through a second world war and the early waves of segregation were crumbling. Brown v. the Board of Education which desegregated schools came into effect when he was 54, same-sex sexual activity was decriminalized in 1962 and he was 67 when interracial marriage in the United States was finally fully legalized. In 1969 – that man who was born 3 years before the Wright brothers took flight, saw America land on the moon.

By the time he passed, the first cellphones were in commercial circulation and the world looked dramatically different. While I don’t know how he felt about each of these moments in history, I know he adapted, he aspired to be a humanist, and he attempted to evolve and improve himself as key pillars in his world changed.

At 83, I see my Grandfather’s journey mirrored in my Dad’s own journey. Born on the cusp of WWII, Dad has continuously navigated a rapidly changing world. And through it, he’s embraced those changes – even when he didn’t fully understand them or it was inconvenient. Not out of – I don’t think – a sense of responsibility or inevitability. But, out of a sense of deep humanism and empathy. I like to think that Grandad could look back and reflect without major regret at how he interacted with people, and judged people throughout the course of his life. I know Dad can.

So, I ask myself – in 2070 when I’m 85 – and I reflect on the world I live in. How it has evolved. And where we are as a culture. How do I want to look back at my life, how I acted, how I treated people, and the decisions I made on the pivotal changes that have and will continue to take place between now and then. While this applies equally to technology and humanity – the weight of being wrong about Women’s Suffrage is vastly different than being wrong about the potential of the Wright Brother’s flying machines.

For me, that answer is simple – even if it isn’t always easy. Headlines, posturing, grandstanding and the like aside. I ask myself – is this an instance where there is a probability that very real harm or disadvantage is taking place and harming a group. Not inconveniencing. But harming. And, if there’s a reasonable probability that that is the case, then my decision is made. Beyond this, I recognize that I’ll be blind to some of these cases, that I won’t understand them, or that they may seem trivial to me. So, I make myself go one step further.

If I’m being told by a reasonable proportion of the impacted group that injustice or harm is taking place. Then, I’ll also push myself to listen. To deeply consider. And then to err on the side of believing them vs. dismissing them.

The final dimension I use is a greater harm test. I ask myself – will this change unjustly and unfairly cause significant harm to another population. And here, again, I very intentionally use the term harm, not inconvenience. Because positive change – things like Suffrage or Interracial marriage – will often inconvenience the status quo as disruption takes place. And by extension, I accept that as that white, middle-class, college-educated, heterosexual male – I’ll likely be inconvenienced quite a few times and quite often over the coming decades. But, if I stay true to this approach – I’ll be able to look back and know that I did my best to stand on the more human, ethical, and empathic side of history.

That’s something that I view as deeply important for my own personal development and character as an individual as well as something that is important to me when I have my own children. Children who, I hope, will look at me and be able to say – yes, my father was born in 1985. Into a world that still had a lot of growing to do. But, he embraced those changes and worked to listen, to be at the forefront of that change, and most importantly – evolved to meet the moment.