My 5-year-old son and I watched a documentary about engineering and all of the hopeful things young people are out doing in the world: Building bridges for people in disadvantaged countries so that people can cross rivers and get across to bigger towns with medicine and schools; designing little robotic submarines built with low-cost materials that could perform complex tasks; learning how to build better bridges and buildings for a world with increasingly volatile weather.
Every time the documentary started playing a hope-filled song that is trying to say it’s all going to be ok, I started to cry. I hadn’t realized before then how deeply I had internalized this conviction that the human race is very much not going to be ok. But, I wasn’t crying because of hopelessness. I was overcome by a sudden, bright flame inside that said maybe we would be ok. Maybe there is a future still on this planet for my son and his children and their children. And maybe it can still be a future filled with peace, joy and plenty. I was crying because I found hope within the hopelessness.
My hope came from watching my son’s bright responses to all the interesting inventions. My hope came from his questions and his ability to live in the moment.
I give myself hope with how we are raising our son. We are homeschooling him and he is learning how to grow his own food, how to build fires, how to make do and how to do without. He’s passionate about fixing broken things and making his own toys from the contents of the recycling bin. He is learning how to be an entrepreneur from both of his parents and he’s learning how to surf the ups and downs of an uncertain world. Our son is creative, independent, and self-motivated. We are honest with him when talking about how human activity affects the Earth’s ecosystem and we encourage him to help us implement solutions that will help our family live more sustainably. Our son is our family’s best accountability officer. There’s not much justifying you can do in the face of so much innocence and honesty. Kids don’t pander.
Yes, in the face of impossible odds, all of these things give me hope. Open your heart and let the pain of hope wake you back up, and then, roll up your sleeves and get to work with us in transforming human society back into a force that can live in harmony with everything else on this Earth. Because, if we’re sitting around shell-shocked and watching this horror play itself out instead of doing something to prevent it from happening, then it will play out and we will be sorry.
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Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
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