What the future holds

World peace is more important than dancing carrots!"

So said my daughter, reacting to the Thanksgiving drama she was in last week. The program included the obligatory salute to the troops, and Madison was both touched at the reminder of war and fearful that the grownups, as we so often do, were missing the point. "Sometimes, she said, "it feels like that war will never end."

For the record, there were no dancing carrots, but that girl does have a way with words. She also has a sensitive spirit, one that can be moved to tears by pollution-spewing smokestacks. She is equally offended by the destruction of the rainforest and the moments of injustice she sees in her small but growing world. With all the wrongs she perceives, it wouldn't be hard to be overwhelmed, and sometimes I worry that she will be. If she can channel her strong feelings, though, she'll be a force.

How to help her preserve her soft-hearted nature yet be resilient enough to cope with the world and strong enough to change it? I try, but I'm not sure I know; growing up so often seems to mean growing jaded, and people who don't engage don't act. It's typical, but telling, that the headlines that tabulate the deaths in Iraq barely make me blanch. It takes a striking atrocity, like six Sunnis being burned alive in Baghdad, to really make an impression. No good can come of being inured to stories--realities--like that, and no good can come of ignoring them because they're "too much." That it's too much for anyone to deal with is exactly the point! Real people are dealing with it every day; the rest of us have no right to claim "war fatigue" and tune it out.

Incalculable damage has been done, but the decisions that determine how long that damage will last and how far it will spread have yet to be made. Perhaps, if we pay attention, the result will be slightly less terrible than it could be. The world will hold plenty of messes for my daughter and her generation to clean up; let's hope this isn't one of them.

Iraq war