A Letter to My
Future Great, Great, Great, Great-Grandson
Dear Charley,
…And I do
hope they named you that, since you haven’t been born yet, and by the time you
read this, I will be as the dust to be wiped off your writing desk. Charlie is my favorite name for the males in our family. This really is a letter of apology, from me to
you, for the condition of the world you live in. This apology is such an infinitesimal
absolution for the enormity of the insult to you and yours, that I’m not sure I
should be making it at all. It should be something much more than that. I am not
alone in this atrocity, but it does not matter since what is done is done and
one cannot turn back the clock to change things.
I know my apology is puzzling because you are probably living a very
normal life: normal meaning like everyone else. What I am trying to say is that where you
are, and the way you live, is not normal.
To begin with, humans have not always lived underground.
The surface
of the planet, believe it or not, was quite livable in my time. The temperature was moderate and the air
reasonably fresh. I commend
the ingenuity of your engineers, who has preserved a
livable atmosphere for you to be living underground.
You must have giant pumps that convert miscellaneous gases to breathable
air. I agree; living underground has
its advantages. For instance, the
temperature is probably constant.
Turbulence of weather is never a factor in your daily life. You never felt unbearable
warmth, nor suffered brittle chills from arctic winters. Am I right? Your waking hours are dependent on
artificial elements controlled, hopefully, by you? Day and night does not exist for you as it
did for me, dictating my every schedule, and you have no need to adjust
your life to the rising of a nearby star.
Homelessness, for you, only exist as a word …and, thank God, I don't believe you have ever
suffered from exposure to the elements.
The bad
thing is you never experienced the joy of being surrounded by infinite
space. And all about you, the wind, and
the rain, and the sounds and smells of the earth's surface, you will never know. You will never know how it is to walk in a
grassy meadow or sleep under an open sky or taste the salt of an ocean as vast as your peripheral vision will allow. Our planet, from lakes to the grandeur of the
Appalachians, will only be experienced from a
screen in the quietness of your dwelling, a dwelling shared, undoubtedly, by many. True, there probably are day tours in
shiny elevators to conduct you to the SURFACE where you see a sun rising
or setting, or behold the glory of the blue heavens with its magnificent clouds,
and even see tiny creatures skittering about on the dry soil below your feet. Have I guess correctly? The night tours will probably
reveal a moon and the infinite number of stars in masses so
endless that you will be frighten by its sheer size. But you are allotted only a few minutes
of these scenic wonders before you are requested to retreat into the safety of
the elevators? I am sure the time on the SURFACE
will be rationed, but just the knowledge of its existence alone is probably bringing
discontentment in your life, and I am truly, truly sorry for that. I think these tours will gradually cease
by governmental decree and the SURFACE will slowly be relegated to history
lessons. It is a failure on me, and
millions like me, who had been complacent when we should have been defiant.
Most of us
did take the future effects of climate changes seriously. The ones that didn’t, somehow, became our
elected leaders. By the way, I’m sure
you’ve heard or studied in your underground school about a mythical king named
Trump, and how he led the exodus to the underworld and was the organizer of the
“Great Change”. Let me say that he is
not mythical, nor was he as evil as probably claimed in your history
books. It will depend on which history
book you read. If you really studied
the past, you would know that he meant well and was misguided by
short-sighted advisors and his inability to read. But in retrospect, we were all to blame. Most of us, including me, did nothing to stop
the polluting except with some sonorous lip service, or minor adjustment to
water usage. We continued to drive our
shinny cars, watered our useless lawns, used polluting chemicals that poisoned
our pristine oceans, chopped and burned our abundant forests, and added tonnage
to the mountains of toxic garbage that did not decomposed. We passed the point of no return...so, as to not dwell on the past, we
forged ahead, and your underground abode is the result.
The great changes in the weather caused the immigration of
whole continents and the breakup of nations. The spread of arid land
and the scarcity of food caused the outbreak of very destructive wars. Weak and smaller nations,
in a desperate effort to level the playing field, necessitated the indiscriminate use of atomic weapons. Soon the entire surface of the
planet was poisoned with radiation. Some
built cities under the ocean and that project became a disaster, am I right? Our country, I can guess, would have burrowed
ourselves deep into the mud, since we have so much of it. But you know all that from your studies in school. I presume we are now living underground in
small cubicles surrounding a common public square. Races should have intermingled to the extent
that everybody will have a little bit of everybody else’s DNA and the term "hate crimes" would have lost it's meaning. By now, the population should all be of one
class, all equal, including the opposite sex, gays, and transgender. The exception will be that of the one percent
composed of your elected leaders and the very affluent.... The rich will always be with us. And I am sure you are one of them.
I don’t want this
letter to be lengthy as I can guess you've lived your entire young life in
sound bites and are unaccustomed to anything longer than a twit. So I will close with this one thought. I just hope that you are happy in your
environment, and if not, at least, content.
Again I am sorry and am sending you this apology from all of us, with
the admonition that you show respect and obedience to your leader, Donald the
Eighth,(as I think he will be called). I don't want you to get in trouble with the authorities. Besides, he has enough of a heavy burden as it is. It's hard enough for Donald the Eighth to govern handicapped by his genetic
inability to read...so be nice. Take care, and lots of love...
Your
loving Great-great-great, great maternal Grandmother,
