#207 / Parents And Power

Looking back on my performance as a parent (not that I have completely escaped that role quite yet), I have decided that empowering children is a key parental responsibility.

In order to be successful at creating the (human) world - the world in which we most immediately live - we each need to have a vivid sense of our own personal ability to generate the new realities that our time (and our aspirations) demand. We need, in other words, a sense that we are truly powerful. If we don't have a sense that we can accomplish what we know we need to do (or what we want to do) our lives will not be satisfying personally, and we will fail both individually and collectively in responding to the challenges and demands that we know we must confront.

My children, and their children (for I am definitely now in grandparent territory), are going to have to make "big changes" in the world.

I hope I let my kids know that they can do it. I know they can.