Thursday, May 21, 2009

HOLD ON TIGHT


New visitors to the chronicles from the future may first wish to visit the past, by reading the earlier hologramletters. (see the older listings on the right, go to the bottom and click the link to the earlier hologramletters)

NOTE The following is an adaptation from the soon to be released book ‘Letters From 2030’. To register interest on its release, or to order a copy email Bob Williamson via this link.

Seeing Alex and Patricia once more as they were in Victor’s memories, took him back in his. He had once asked the question of all that he met, as he asked in his book…. “What do we owe our children?”

He had penned……… and now in the quiet of his solitude he would speak those works again to all that may hear. That they might now answer that question; and hold on tight. He switched on the outgoing hologramletter transmission to share his “What did we owe our children?”

There was a native American Indian saying, "We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."

What was it that we borrowed from them?

Their future was in our hands. Their safe future was in our hands.

From the time as parents that we brought them into the world our promise was made. Our promise to hold no tight to their hands; to hold on tight to their dreams; to hold on tight to their future.

Did we ever have the right to let them go? To turn away from the promise we had made? To releases their dreams? Or to abandon our hold on their safe future?

To leave them to solve problems for themselves; to leave them to solve problems we had inadvertently created? When was the time that we would say; sorry, sort it out for yourself? When we would say I no longer want to hold on tight?

In the book I gave a part of myself freely to those who would read it.

He picked up the book and read --


………..The problem we face is a self-imposed journey to oblivion or a change of direction, to one where we hopefully still have somewhere safe to live. Can we not liken our grave and desperate situation to a person sitting in a doctor’s office? The doctor says: “You are not going to like the news, you are very, very sick. The treatment and medicine to make you well again is going to make you even sicker than you feel at the moment. It is going to take a long time for you to get well. But, if you don’t take it, you will die. What would you like to do?”

There is a really hard choice here for you (the reader) to make. Your children or your grandchildren are going to die from what you and I have passed on to them. Do we leave it to them to suffer alone, taking very hard medicine and treatment to swallow and even then they may not survive, or do we take some of the preventative medicine for them now? Which parent when their child was ill or in pain, would not have wished we could have taken the pain from them onto ourselves? My youngest daughter Emma at age 19, after a massive, unexpected, and sudden asthma attack, could not breathe. By the time the ambulance was called and she was rushed to the hospital we had lost her twice. She had died. They revived her and she was in intensive care for quite some time. As we sat by her bedside in constant vigil over the next two weeks or so, there was not one thought or doubt in my mind that I would have willingly traded places with her in a heartbeat. I want my children to have the future I dreamed of for them, from the very moment my wife and I brought them into the world. How about you? How about you Mr. Prime Minister? How about you Mr. President? How about any political leader of any country on the planet? How about the wealthiest person on the planet? How about the poorest person on the planet?

Would any of us not give a kidney to our child if it meant they would live? Do we take some medicine for them now, or do we wait until they need to spend their lives on a dialysis machine or on life support?

Global Statesmen….Ask us the right question and you will have our answer. Ask us do we want to protect finite economic growth in gross domestic product for a short time into the future, or do we want short-term pain in precious GDP for the security and future of our children? I won’t vote you out of office and I don’t think the majority of the people who elected you to the honour of being our political leaders, would either. Should your legacy be as the leaders that led the world to collective genocide, or snatched life and victory from the hands of defeat? It’s your choice—no it’s our choice.
He put down the book.

From the time we brought our children into the world until the time we are taken from it; our pledge to hold on tight to them, to commit to them, to honour that Indian saying ‘we borrow the future from our children’ must be a sacred oath.

They say that God created the Heaven and the Earth and he placed it in our care. We must daily ask ourselves if we are doing everything we can to honour that pledge and the scared oath we have collectively made to our children. By seeing the creation of a safe future for our children as a self imperative we can change ourselves with small acts even now to build a future for them that is as it was, left to us by our ancestors.
performed by Taylor Penrose

Listen to her plea and give her your answer. Will you hold on tight or let her go?

2 comments:

  1. 'Hold on Tight' by Howard Salmon and performed by Taylor Penrose is not only now the official theme of the 'Letters From 2030' series and that of the Greenhouse Neutral Foundation, it expresses for me the reason we must commit now as a collective global community to change our direction on the road to the future we owe our children.

    As a moral obligation we, the family of man, must urgently give the mandate to global political leaders by our parade of concern for a safe future, in order that they, will implement sound policy on global emissions reductions.

    You and I with the voice of one must united in this goal, and demand action to allow us all, to hold on tight.
    I would like to express my gratitude to Suzanne whose assistance made this posting possible.

    Thank you Lady Writer.

    Bob Williamson

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  2. I feel compelled to offer a form of rejoinder to these eloquent and moving expressions, by sharing an admonishment I wrote to others in January:

    "How would our children and grandchildren fare in a mercilessly overheated world at savage war over the last of the oil, the last of the food-producing lands, a suffering world of famine and deprivation and predation? That's the world we'll leave them if we fail to unite now and give our all to save planet earth's climate, resources, and life, with the urgency demanded of us!"

    Pondering what I would write if Bob Williamson asked me to contribute to LETTERS FROM 2030, I am now haunted by the answer to my own question.

    Please consider me at one with you, for the sake of all our children.

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