Being a Good Ancestor: Acting Now for Future Generations

"What happens now, and in these next few years, will profoundly affect the next few thousand years." Roman Krznaric

I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a kid, I took for granted the radiant sunsets. The closeness of the mountains and desert. The smell of roasting green chiles and piñon fires. The rich history embedded in the place.

Part of what made my childhood in Santa Fe so special was the elementary school I attended. La Mariposa Montessori wasn't your typical school. I was able to study whatever I wanted however I wanted – an early education that ranged from writing plays as a way to study history to avoiding math at all costs. In addition to its three open-floor classrooms, La Mariposa had sprawling grounds filled with animals and access to the wide-open spaces and winding arroyos of the Northern New Mexican landscape.

I can still remember our “science days” when a tall man named Bill would come to our school and take us kids out into what felt like the wilderness. What stands out in my memory most from those happy, fun walks was Bill's insistence that we avoid stepping on the lichen - a green fungus that grew on rocks and the dry ground - because it was alive and an important part of the ecosystem we shared.

Now, decades removed from those walks, I can appreciate Bill’s insistence that we trod through our ecosystem with care as an expression of a new concept that has profoundly shifted the way I look at the world. This concept starts with a question first asked by Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, that I hope you'll spend several moments contemplating before moving on.

Are you being a good ancestor?

I encountered this question at the end of last year in Roman Krznaric's book The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking. The book spoke to me in a way a book hasn’t in years. I devoured its pages, not with speed but with reverence. As I reflected on the book, I recognized the seedling of what Krznaric so brilliantly explores in those early childhood lessons at La Mariposa, where so much care and thought had been given to each child as well as the animals, plants, and land surrounding us.

So, what does it mean to be a good ancestor, and why is it so important that we ask this question of ourselves today?

To put it simply, being a good ancestor means considering the impact our choices will have on future generations. It means stretching ourselves to think outside of the immediate future and consider the impact of our choices - 100, 500, 1000 years from now. It means seeing ourselves in relationship not only to the people who are living with us today but to the people who will live hundreds of years from now.

This long-term thinking is hard!

Everything about our culture is focused on what some call the Short Now - the immediacy of the moment imposed by work deadlines, the Buy Now button, and the increasingly short news cycle that many of us follow daily if not hourly. The Short Now is the need for immediate gratification and the dopamine rush we receive from push notifications and on-demand food, booze, and sex.

Our addiction to the Short Now has major consequences. In the moment, these near instantaneous outcomes are gratifying. They give us what we crave and desire in the moment. They even make us feel safe. Yet, they also disconnect us from the vastness of time - sometimes called Long Time - and the fact that all our choices have consequences that stretch far into the future, not only for our children and grandchildren but for the lives of human beings who will live hundreds of years from now. It is incumbent on us to be good ancestors for our future selves and for those people who have yet to be born.

Several years ago, at a photography exhibit called Wild at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I had the profound realization while looking at the photograph of a gorilla that, as humans, our primary purpose is to be stewards of life and to ensure that life continues. Life is not limited to humanity.

Life includes other animal species, plants, our precious air and water, and the whole of the universe itself. A good ancestor is a steward to all of this. As the Apaches say, “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

When I look at our world today, I see us struggling to be good ancestors. I see us hurtling forward with no clear destination in mind, pretending that the world we've known will continue on indefinitely. All we have to do is look at the past two years to know this assumption is an illusion. It's time to ask ourselves what we are doing each and every day to be good ancestors. It's time we stop insisting on progress for the sake of progress and higher profits and start considering how our actions are impacting the generations to come.

Our lifetimes are but a pinprick in the vastness of what came before and in the vastness of what is still to come. The cost of gas, slow-downs in the supply chain, and what this politician or that said yesterday may loom large in the moment but are insignificant in the scope of Long Time. We can continue to entrench ourselves in petty squabbles and squander our natural world, or we can set aside our need to be right, focus on the vastly bigger picture, and recognize that our way of life is unsustainable and that it is setting neither us nor the future generations who are depending on us up to thrive.

Every day we walk through the metaphorical wilderness of Northern New Mexico. I have a feeling that Bill, wherever he is today, would say that we are stepping on the lichen all over our world and paying little regard to the ecosystem that gives and sustains life. We can either trample it in our manic quest for progress and profits, or we can step carefully, with reverence, taking care to nurture it for the many generations still to come.

The choice is up to each of us.

I hope you will join me in thinking about our relationship and responsibility to the human beings who will be born 100, 500, 1000 years from now and do your best to be a good ancestor.

____________________________________________________________

Jake Fishbein is an executive and personal coach who helps men make and navigate their most important choices. He works with small business owners, mid-level executives, and runs men's groups. You can learn more about Coach Jake at www.jakefishbein.com.

The Co-Mindfulness Writing Series is a collective story, a work in progress, a conversation on love, inter-being, and a life worth living. Subscribe below and join us!