The Cost of living
There are two costs of living.
The first is what we pay to live. Its the reason we have to go to work each day, at least for most of us. This cost is important to us and those around us while we are alive.
The second is a more important cost from the perspective of humanity. It is the cost the future has to pay because the past allowed you to live.
While the former is more important from our perspective, the latter is more important from the perspective of time.
Many of us don’t realize that the choices we make are shaping the future for the next generation.
Kids, for example, even before they can speak are watching us to see what’s OK to do and what’s not. Their sample space is usually a very small sample space of parents and close family. Every action you do in their presence is recorded as “OK to do” activity. Every fear you have, that gets expressed via your body language, becomes a source of fear for them. Its so arbitrary that it’s impossible to “to be on your best behaviour”. Ultimately they catch onto things that are YOU . I.e. your natural self. The way you are when you are not trying to put on a show.
Once they get language, things become a complete chaos. They will either decide to emulate your behaviours or act in rejection of them. Either way you have a contribution there. Of course at this stage there are so many other inputs to contrast and compare.
An example of this from my life, is my dad’s selflessness and hatred of politics of any sort.
As far as I can remember I have always been “naive Param”, who doesn’t know how to lie, and can’t handle politics of any kind. I have great difficulty doing anything I consider wrong, to the point that I wouldn’t sell school raffle tickets to parent’s friends, as their kids would already have sold them some and to get them to buy from me would be incorrect abuse of my relationship to them. Yeah its always been complicated and I still can’t tolerate politics of any form.
The point being that my dad’s actions and behaviour became a yardstick in my life.
On the other hand, there are a number of examples of children of religious families, turning completely atheistic.
In a nutshell, its not sufficient, to act correctly, you need to get the younger generation on your side as well.
Its also important to succeed doing those right things, as people are more inclined to follow those who succeed. This is probably the toughest one but by far the most important. By succeeding in the right way, you create that possibility for the generations to come. This is akin to how runners broke the “mile in 4 minutes” barrier easily after it was first broken by Roger Bannister.
You may be in a position of power. Maybe someone who chooses the successful from a rank below you? Does your selection criteria look for people doing the ethically right things apart from the numbers ? If you don’t then essentially you are espousing “the ends justify the means” rather than “excellence”.
The conclusion is that we all need to be more responsible towards the future we are creating with and for our children. We should act ethically and succeed, though it may be the more difficult option. We should also be openly critical of winning by crooked means, though it may mean going against the crowd.