Dear my Seniors, 2020

June 10, 2020

Dear my Seniors,

               We are living a moment so broken and so full of raw pain and danger that entrenched failures have become, finally, un-trenched. For those living my many privileges, family is wide open and present in a way I’ve missed, and I have a work-life balance I’ve never had in America before. And for all of us,  white complacency that has allowed brutalities against African Americans and Latinx to occur repeatedly and overtly—the white complacency that has allowed institutions, laws, stories, and ignorances to nurture destructive biases and inequities in wealth, safety, and health—is finally being shaken. The re-imagining of community health is loud enough to reach city halls; and many whites, however halting and awkward, have finally joined people of color in a reckoning of the racist bones of our country.

               How we meet this moment depends on you.

               My own generation and class and race have worked hard to protect freedoms. We’ve been about individualism and freedom and achieving personal comforts, successfully ripping away taxes that my parents’ generation paid and stoking profit margins against unions and workers, eating the climate and wrapping guns in a banner of freedom. But in this broken moment, the ethos of individualism and personal freedom is being tested: failure to mask up, wash hands, and stand apart can cripple and kill our neighbors; white safety is being shown in connection with the brutalizing and killing of black bodies. The ethos of individualism is being tested by both pandemic and by racism, and by its successful fulfilment in our dunderheaded president, and so we find ourselves in a communitarian moment we have not seen in half a century.

               The Great Depression left a deep impression on its generation, who were frugal, coupon pinching people to the end, appreciating family, tradition and stability. This era will certainly shape your generation as well: You’ve already had to be so adaptable; you’ve leaned into friendships and social connection in creative, soulful ways; you’ve recognized mental health challenges my generation stigmatized; and you’ve embraced understanding and supporting people not your selves; you’ve been shaped into a more activist, generous, compassionate and outraged thoughtful citizenry, open to sharing and receiving anger, to standing together when we are called to stand together, and to sacrifice personal comforts and easy silences for a common good.

               I said this to Hands for a Bridge on our last day, but I’ll say it again here. I believe your most important quality is kindness. If you are also smart and funny, that’s a bonus; but when it comes to the room I want to be in and the people I want to sing with and how we heal the world, kindness is paramount. If you put two people of opposing views together and they are both kind—no matter how intelligent or how ignorant—those two people can learn something together. The good news is that most people can be kind, and the ones who can’t are wounded in ways that can use our compassion.

               You have demonstrated such good hearts over and over. You’ve shown repeatedly your thoughtfulness, kindness and grace, your love, tenderness, vulnerability, and care. I’ve seen it in Amelia, and how easy she is to express joy, how fast to express grief; I’ve seen it in choices she makes and the company she keeps—the big hearts that sustain her own and bring her to her best self, and I’ve certainly felt it in what you bring me. I so miss what it means and what it does in my classroom. Just as I’ll miss you.

               Dear my seniors, this moment can be one of reconstruction and healing, but you must keep up pressure, continue to witness and share, and, to my white Seniors, over the ignorance, careless silence, and comforts of my generation’s brand of individualism, you must continue to privilege the lives, spirits, and bodies of your brothers and sisters, yellow, black, brown, white. And to all, if and when you can do this with love in your hearts, our world is that much a better place.

               I’m too sorry I can’t hug you in celebration and farewell. I zoom hug you.

Love,

David Grosskopf