Against the Bland: An Unexpected Answer
Expansion occurs when I open to a new thought or idea, or when I allow a question to attract an unexpected answer.
- "Daily Word," May 16, 2011
Change of wind on the weather vane today. In a week I will watch with a bursting heart as my daughter earns her college degree. I will sit in the sun on a folding chair in the company of other silently proud parents observing similar cornerstone moments in the lives of cherished sons and daughters. A recent opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times addressed the seemingly unfounded optimism of college graduates. What is it about this moment that poises us all on the brink, believing, fully, in a future of unlimited possibilities? It is an authentic moment of expansion. We are in the crux: witness to the intellectual power of young minds that will unleash unimaginable potential. Unexpected answers to old problems. Fresh solutions to our generation's dogged failures. Where we ourselves have stalled out solving the great dilemmas of the world, the young carry the hopes of the many forward.
"The Key Lime," writes Campbell McGrath in his pithy poem - "Curiously yellow hand-grenade/ of flavor; Molotov-cocktail / for a revolution against the bland." Young minds are the explosive key limes of our times. Let us celebrate that bright tang of intelligence and enthusiasm. Let us wish them well as the graduates of 2011 take all we have saved of the lessons of the past and invent new answers for the future. Shatter old paradigms. Let us be proud of the next generation, proud of continuity, and remember, for a moment, we ourselves were once the sharp bite on staid thinking. It's never too late to rethink the question and find an unexpected answer.
- "Daily Word," May 16, 2011
Change of wind on the weather vane today. In a week I will watch with a bursting heart as my daughter earns her college degree. I will sit in the sun on a folding chair in the company of other silently proud parents observing similar cornerstone moments in the lives of cherished sons and daughters. A recent opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times addressed the seemingly unfounded optimism of college graduates. What is it about this moment that poises us all on the brink, believing, fully, in a future of unlimited possibilities? It is an authentic moment of expansion. We are in the crux: witness to the intellectual power of young minds that will unleash unimaginable potential. Unexpected answers to old problems. Fresh solutions to our generation's dogged failures. Where we ourselves have stalled out solving the great dilemmas of the world, the young carry the hopes of the many forward.
"The Key Lime," writes Campbell McGrath in his pithy poem - "Curiously yellow hand-grenade/ of flavor; Molotov-cocktail / for a revolution against the bland." Young minds are the explosive key limes of our times. Let us celebrate that bright tang of intelligence and enthusiasm. Let us wish them well as the graduates of 2011 take all we have saved of the lessons of the past and invent new answers for the future. Shatter old paradigms. Let us be proud of the next generation, proud of continuity, and remember, for a moment, we ourselves were once the sharp bite on staid thinking. It's never too late to rethink the question and find an unexpected answer.
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