Day 1: The 22nd Century Skill that You Can Develop and Strengthen Today
This afternoon I held the future.
On September 9, 2102, my granddaughter will be 80 years old.
She will be a 22nd Century person.
As I held her this afternoon, I wondered what skills she will need to navigate her life. I struggled with an extensive list. But, I eventually came down to one I thought was essential.
This skill is not technological. It’s not financial. It’s not scientific.
I thought of compassion. If humans will survive and thrive, compassion needs to be learned not as some optional and sweet character trait and not as some religious tenet.
It needs to be taught as a skill.
We can develop, strengthen, apply, and measure it.
I don’t know how this will happen. Given our current state of political and cultural division, compassion seems to be exiled. Too many are holding ever so tightly to their viewpoints and have lost the capacity to walk in someone else’s shoes.
But I am not dissuaded from imagining and dreaming a more compassionate world.
The more I talk with people about the present and where we are, the more I sense that there are many who want to move in this direction. I hear this in prisons, college classrooms, and over cafecito talking about vegetable gardens.
Have you been around a 22nd century person lately?
If you have, what skills do you think they will need?
