A Future for Our Fathers (Not Just the Kids!)
My dad is an older dad. He was 42 when I was born. And his dad was an old dad too: 55 by the time my dad came around. Two old dads add up to one grandfather who turned 97 the year I was born. Some kids my age had grandparents who were hippies. My grandpa's entire childhood preceded the Model T.
I think that background has shaped my worldview—at least a little if not a lot. I come from people who came from a long time ago. I’ve always liked history, and I’ve always liked adults more than kids. So I spent a lot of time sitting and listening to old people talk. It’s not that I heard them talk about plastics or fossil fuels or how nobody these days fixes their clothes. But your worldview reflects the time you grew up in, and those long generations made me feel closer to a world that wasn’t designed around consumption, pollution, and waste.
Of course, the waste-based world was starting to emerge when my dad was a kid in the 1950s. The post-war economy kicked consumption into high gear. Convenience was becoming king. A generation was told the future was in plastics. And they were right! It happened quickly, without much thought to what that future would actually look like from an environmental perspective.
No one was trying to pollute the Earth, of course. They were just trying to give their kids a better future with the model the world was giving them. They were trying to put as much distance as they could between the rich life they envisioned and the meager existence they associated with the past.
If having kids helps you look forward, I think having older parents makes you look back. It makes you think about how people used to do things. And it helps you realize that old people have an interest in the future too.
When I think about building a better world, my source of motivation is not really the children (though I know the children are who you're supposed to think about!). I think more often of my parents. I want them to leave the world in a state that they're proud of. I want them to feel they're leaving us a bright future, not a heap of environmental debt. I want to tap into their knowledge of a life with less plastic. Before my parents die, I want them to see a less wasteful world.
So my thought in celebration of Father’s Day: Kids are a great reason to live more sustainably, but the future isn't only about them. Build a better future for your forefathers. When you treat the planet well, you honor their legacy and respect the resources they’ve left you. Reuse your old soap bottle to channel your Depression-era grandpa. Try to fix your toaster in honor of your resource-saving dad. Work to reduce food waste out of respect for your ancestors who struggled to find enough, grow enough, make enough, save enough. Who didn’t waste because they couldn’t; who didn’t have the concept of throwing things away.
Ask yourself: Is the future we’re creating one our parents would be proud of? If not, why not? Talk to the old dads you know. What do they think? What can you learn from them? Can they imagine—or remember—a different, better way?
-Justine
