A note to my children,

Take note that this message is being composed in May of 2017 and life is miserable. The world is run by idiots and charlatans and I hope that by the time you exist (existence is awful enough to begin with) that things will be better and leaders will be wiser, more humble, and discerning with their actions. Greed and the exploitation of the worker has lead to unspeakable horror and the willingness and desire for comfort has made people turn a blind eye to the crimes and indignities being suffered by the masses. Life is hell and it is important to always remember that. Even if it means getting hurt or feeling hurt it is necessary to pursue knowledge and fight for justice for all people.

At the current moment the planet I was born on will be dramatically different from the one you will be. At the current moment I feel that even having children of my own would be unethical and unfair to not only the planet, but to you as well. The minute sliver of hope that things might be curbed for not the better, but less worse though drives me to fight to create a world that can bring you the joy and intrigue it brought my sister and me. A rapidly changing climate enabled by the greed of a bourgeois and ignorant class in denial of their crimes against the planet and humanity have enabled things to get out of hand and my greatest hope for your lives aside from inheriting a planet that is sustainable is that these people will be brought to justice and that they and their ancestors will always be condemned throughout history as enemies of humanity.

I hope that when you are young the Lakes are still swimmable and the dunes still lush mountains of golden sand and deep green forests. I hope that it is as dark and silent in the middle of the night as it was when I would camp and hike there. I hope that the wild places of the world expand and take themselves back so that you might catch a glimpse and experience spaces outside of definition, language, concepts and other imperialisms of the ego that have left such spaces absent. I hope things are quieter when you are my age, I hope the extraneous noises of hate, jealousy, and greed are silent and extinguished and that the world will be simpler and more equitable. I cannot guarantee any of this though.

I hope that people will be stronger in your generation and in mine as well in raising yours, far more so than our parents.

I promise that in the years between this letter and your birth that I will not allow myself to be consumed or distracted by the trivialities and diversions of my world. I will work tirelessly to preserve the planet and to expand spaces outside of human domination into mutual zones of ecological and anthropomorphic collaboration. It is already too late to give you a pristine world, but I hope to give you a new one, one that is better than mine, but I expect that you do the same for your own children. I promise to do what is necessary and right and to use my voice to influence my own generation to push forward and revolt against the systems, which perpetuate and preserve the degradation and destruction of man and nature at the same time. I must end by saying I have no high hopes for my successes with my promises, but I will work myself into the ground trying to fulfill them. I can guarantee nothing so in advance I will say I am very sorry I was not and never will be good enough to give you what I want for you all to have.

-your father