FROM THE EDITOR: A Grandchild Changes Things - When We Shed Fear
Babies offer many lessons. For a new grandfather, they're a reminder of the importance of passing on the importance of neighboring, and creating opportunity.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Email Martin
He snuggled into my shoulder, his hands reaching upward but his mind not yet able to tell his fingers to grab hold. He depended upon my securely holding him, trusting, without knowing that he is trusting, that I would hold tight and not let go — just as I did with my son — his father — had 26 years ago.
To hold one’s own baby is to feel the burden of responsibility. Your success and theirs are bound together.
To hold one’s grandchild — as I did for the first time this past week — is to come to terms with both your own mortality and your responsibility for every newborn’s future.
To hold a grandchild is to stare into the face of tomorrow — a tomorrow that at some point may likely not include the grandparent. Money and technology cannot stave off our mortality — Bryan Johnson and the similarly delusional should acquaint themselves with the Epic of Gilgamesh — but our decisions will surely affect the futures of the newest born and affect how joyful and productive their lives will be.
Making good decisions requires standing firmly on two principles: Exchanging fear for belief in our neighbors, and belief in our future.
‘Neighboring’
My grandson fell asleep as we walked and bounced through the grocery store while I was quietly singing to him two songs that I used to soothe my own children.
Close your eyes
Have no fear
The monster's gone, he's on the run
And your daddy's here
— From “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon
And …
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
— From “Imagine,” by John Lennon
Those ideals Lennon captured so eloquently — a home environment where children can be safe and begin to learn and grow, and a community of people who embrace the importance of needing one another — will always be ideals. Life is brutal, and unfair.
Those ideals are not, however, beyond reach. And so long as that remains true, hope endures. There is a growing fear, however, that we live in an age where those ideals are under siege.
While I rocked my grandson to sleep to those tunes, I had in my mind a recent column by Thomas Friedman. The opening was as chilling a lead as I have read:
The last year has been one of the most depressing of my nearly 50 years as a journalist. It’s not just that I’ve had to watch the Trump administration destroy cherished alliances, like ours with Western Europe and Canada, that have upheld freedom, democracy and global trade since World War II. It’s also been the stunning cowardice and boundless greed with which leaders of big law firms and Big Tech have bent their knees to King Donald and indulged a cabinet of clowns — not one of whom they’d hire in their own businesses.
The second, among the most inspiring:
But then I spent time in my native state, Minnesota, after something else that I’d never seen in nearly 50 years: a spontaneous uprising of civic activism propelled by a single idea — I am my neighbor’s keeper, whoever he or she is and however he or she got here.
The most astonishing thing about what transpired in Minnesota this past winter?
“At a time when we have a president so shameless that he insists on putting his name on every public building he can,” Friedman wrote, “these good Samaritans of all colors and creeds acted without fanfare. ‘There were hundreds of leaders of this movement,’ Bill George, a longtime Twin Cities business executive, said to me, ‘and I don’t know a single one of their names.’”
There’s a verb to describe what happened, and continues to happen — “neighboring.”
A longstanding rite of moving into one’s 60s and beyond is to too easily embrace the idea that “these kids” and the “younger generation” don’t know anything, are lazy, unmotivated, or just otherwise disengaged.
I certainly hear a great deal of this among many of the older people I spend time with. And it is understandable — in aging, one sees the many hazards that can derail a life before it even begins.
What keeps us from falling into despair is neighboring.
Paving the way for the next generation. Providing a leg up when the opportunity presents itself. And most important, instilling the ideals of community and hope to those looking to us for guidance — be they teenagers facing life after school, or an infant totally dependent on others for everything.
We are seeing in real-time what happens when people lose faith in their neighbors.
We can ensure the ideals of community and hope by leaning into neighboring. We support our neighbors despite who they are, where they are from, or who they voted for.
Grandparents should be of an age to appreciate the importance of neighboring — we’ve lived and seen enough to know what happens when we trade neighbors for fear.
Embrace the Future
My grandson depends upon the future, and he faces that future without fear.
With time, and experience, fear will creep into his thinking. Failures hurt. Mistakes prove costly. Part of maturing is learning from those experiences and balancing future risks against future opportunities.
But in the same way that fear undermines neighboring, it can destroy the futures of the generations just getting started.
We see this in communities that are dug into an idealized past that celebrates “rural character” or “small-town life,” and responds to the need for housing and economic development with a NIMBY sign in one hand and “Don’t Fairfax [insert your town or county here]” sign in the other.
But there are communities that understand that people and economic growth are not the problem, but the promise of hope for the generation coming along.
Such was the message of an op-ed published in Cardinal News recently written by a number of community leaders in southern Virginia.
Perpetually left behind economically, southern Virginia has long felt itself the ugly stepchild, deprived of the economic opportunity that has enabled Northern Virginia to become an economic powerhouse.
These writers now fear the best opportunity to grow their communities may be stopped in its tracks before they have an opportunity to benefit. The General Assembly is considering rolling back Virginia’s Data Center Retail Sales and Use Tax Exemption program, which would effectively kill any data center growth in southside. These southside leaders, however, are putting their feet firmly in the future for their families and the generations now coming along.
“All Virginia communities are asking is to have the same opportunity that others have had to compete for the investment that makes sense for our communities.”
Defeating Fear
Fear is a natural ally of the old.
And it is beaten by each generation by a grandchild, nestled in the arms of a grandparent.
We rightly fear what life brings to an unsuspecting baby. But we also know the endless possibilities before them.
Possibilities born of healthy relationships with neighbors, and an optimistic view of the future. A future born of economic growth, and welcoming communities that value growth.
The gift of grandchildren is reminding those approaching the end of their lives that hope abides in an infant in your arms — trusting us to do the right thing for them.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
