Francisco Miraval
We live in a world surrounded by horrendous natural and human-caused disasters, mixed with inspiring stories about charity work and new scientific discoveries. Why, then, we devote e very week a few paragraphs to topics that will never appear on the cover of the newspapers or during the “Breaking News” segments of the newscasts?
Part of the answer is that people better qualified than this writer address and analyze in detail all those topics flooding the newspaper pages and the television screens. Other part of the answer is that some of those topics that will never get the attention of the media are nonetheless important and inspiring topics.
For example, every day we receive a large dose of bad news, giving the impression that problems are uncontrollably piling up and that we live in an unending rollercoaster. Under those conditions, is there an authentic hope, that is, a hope that is so real that is not just the illusion that perhaps things may improve in the future?
I think that kind of hope does exist. The reason –perhaps an improbable, unacceptable, contradictory reason- is that there is growing number of young people who, at least in my opinion, realize that the future is no longer a continuation of the past. In other words, the future is not what once was and young people know it.
My first name is Francisco. That was also the first name of my father. And can you guess the first name of my grandfather? Let me say that my son’s first name is not Francisco. There is nothing wrong with that name, but when my son was born, we felt his future was not just a continuation of our past.
That does not mean, of course, that we did not teach him our culture, language, beliefs, and traditions. It means, however, that the ideas, behaviors, and goals of my generation may not have a direct application in the globalized, technologized, and hyper-connected world of my son’s generation.
I always explain that neither my father nor my children ever had any problems with computers. My father did not have problems with computers because he did not have computers. My children did not have problems with computers because they always had computers. My generation grew up with no computers and later we had to learn how that you cannot live without computers.
In only three generations (with my generation in the middle), we went from seeing computers only during Star Trek episodes on old black and white television sets to hold in our hands devices, such as smartphones, that in many cases are as powerful as those devices created decades earlier by the imaginative minds of science-fiction writers.
When science fiction becomes science-fact, that situation is a clear indication that the future is not a continuation of the past. The future is changing and young people can feel it, especially those young people who take life’s challenges seriously and, therefore, want to build an authentically better future.