(DON THOMPSON / iNFOnews.ca)

OPINION

If ever you doubt yourself - or others - especially today’s youth, take a deep breath and don’t give up. It’s easy to look about and feel discouraged, even hopeless at what we face today.

A worldwide pandemic has killed 6.53 million people the past two years…and about 1,600 will die every day…perhaps for decades. More than nine million people worldwide die from hunger and malnutrition every year…that’s 24,658 people each day…8,219 of them children.

Those of us lucky enough to survive disease…face a changing climate that is more death from a thousand cuts…even as we deny it all.

No matter what country…it seems half the people hate their nation’s leader. It matters little the target…Trudeau, Biden, King Charles…there’s plenty of hate to go around.

Nearly 70 percent of the world’s population earns less than $10 a day…and the richest 20 percent account for 75 percent of the world’s wealth.

Things I can’t quantify but exist nonetheless…discrimination and injustice in the form racism, sexism, ageism and intolerance to different sexualities and disabilities…make the world seem bleak.

Add in the human frailties of laziness, selfishness, ignorance and hatred - again all difficult to quantify but thrive just the same - and pessimism and cynicism might seem appropriate.

But…there is hope, there is youth…and they aren’t going to take this lying down.

Amanda Gorman is a 24-year-old American - raised by a single mother - in Watts, one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles. At 19, she was named America’s Youth Poet Laureate.

She speaks - not for today’s youth - but as simply one of many…an army of millions. These young folks are heirs to a world in turmoil that everyone over 40 has some degree of responsibility in the mess we left them. People long in the tooth like me cannot in good conscience say we did our best…that would be a bold lie. We were mediocre at best…and I’m probably guilty of being charitable.

Amanda Gorman

Image Credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/Carlos M. Vazquez II

Youth today - like generations before them - fit along a continuum of understanding the world around them and the desire to change things for the better…for everyone. We will soon see how much smarter they are than us.

I believe they might see what doesn’t work…simply by watching what we did and didn’t do. They will, however, make many mistakes that plague all youth over the centuries. That’s okay…if I had to bet - and I am a bit of a gambler - I might go all in with these young folks.

Amanda Gorman delivered her poem - “An Ode We Owe” - during the 77th United Nations General Assembly last week giving fair warning to those who have ignored both climate change and our common humanity…and inspiring youth worldwide to do better.

She is the 2022 version of Bob Dylan…with more reach and influence in moments than he had in years. Consider her words…carefully.

“How can I ask you to do good,
When we’ve barely withstood
Our greatest threats yet:
The depths of death, despair and disparity,
Atrocities across cities, towns & countries,
Lives lost, climactic costs.
Exhausted, angered, we are endangered,
Not because of our numbers,
But because of our numbness. We’re strangers
To one another’s perils and pain,
Unaware that the welfare of the public
And the planet share a name –
Equality
Equality doesn’t mean being the exact same,
But enacting a vast aim:
The good of the world to its highest capability.
The wise believe that our people without power
Leaves our planet without possibility.
Therefore, though poverty is a poor existence,
Complicity is a poorer excuse.
We must go the distance,
Though this battle is hard and huge,
Though this fight we did not choose,
For preserving the earth isn’t a battle too large
To win, but a blessing too large to lose.
This is the most pressing truth:
That our people have only one planet to call home
And our planet has only one people to call its own.
We can either divide and be conquered by the few,
Or we can decide to conquer the future,
And say that today a new dawn we wrote,
Say that as long as we have humanity,
We will forever have hope.
Together, we won’t just be the generation
That tries but the generation that triumphs;
Let us see a legacy
Where tomorrow is not driven
By the human condition,
But by our human conviction.
And while hope alone can’t save us now,
With it we can brave the now,
Because our hardest change hinges
On our darkest challenges.
Thus may our crisis be our cry, our crossroad,
The oldest ode we owe each other.
We chime it, for the climate,
For our communities.
We shall respect and protect
Every part of this planet,
Hand it to every heart on this earth,
Until no one’s worth is rendered
By the race, gender, class, or identity
They were born. This morn let it be sworn
That we are one one human kin,
Grounded not just by the griefs
We bear, but by the good we begin.
To anyone out there:
I only ask that you care before it’s too late,
That you live aware and awake,
That you lead with love in hours of hate.
I challenge you to heed this call,
I dare you to shape our fate.
Above all, I dare you to do good
So that the world might be great”

I hope the youth of today, and tomorrow, will do better than we did in everything.

The baton we passed them has a short fuse, and it’s burning. I look at my grandchildren and wonder what their lives will be like in 25 years. Will their legacy be better, more thoughtful than ours, more just?

I’m betting it will, I’m hoping it will. And even in today’s darkness, I can see light.

— Don Thompson, an American awaiting Canadian citizenship, lives in Vernon and in Florida. In a career that spans more than 40 years, Don has been a working journalist, a speechwriter and the CEO of an advertising and public relations firm. A passionate and compassionate man, he loves the written word as much as fine dinners with great wines.

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