Our Future

I am generally not one to proselytize religion on this blog, as evidenced by the more or less complete absence of religious reference on here. However, I went to church this past Sunday and the minister said something that really hit home with me. I will do my best to paraphrase:

While it has become a popular, feel-good message to state that the children are our future, it simply isn't true. The children are no more our future than are seeds our salad. It is incumbent on us, the adults, to ensure that the children are properly brought up to care for and tend the future. If we fail our own children, the failure of the future belongs to us in greater proportion than does it belong to our children. It is our responsibility to save the seed corn from today's crop, plant that seed corn, tend to it, harvest it, and save a new batch of seed corn.

In other words, when I stop paraphrasing a man who is considerably more eloquent than I, insofar as we adults (and I say "we" to very much encompass myself, at 41 years old) complain about the "kids these days," that complaint should be directed inward, as we have collectively failed to raise the "kids these days" in a way that is satisfactory for us. Insofar as the "good old days" were better than the present days, this is our fault. The world today is what we made out of the world of yesterday. For the mathematically inclined, it can be represented by an equation: [today] = [yesterday] + [our influence].

I suppose the proper question for our public policy, at every level, is twofold: (1) is "our influence" a positive or negative input to the world of yesterday; and (2) are we properly saving, planting, etc., our seed corn and teaching the next generation to do so, or are we eating it with no thought for the future?