Martin Kim:
CLASS OF 1967
Palo Verde High SchoolClass of 1967
Tucson, AZ
Martin's Story
DISTILLING TRUTH FROM PLATITUDES
As I try to absorb today’s current events I feel compelled by a sense of a cultural obligation to form opinions on gun-control, abortion rights, poverty, the climate crisis, and the disparity between economic classes. In attempting this I am struck by how uncompromising arguments are on opposing sides of all these issues. Lines are drawn according to political parties, religious beliefs, and sometimes by contorting championed economic models. Most people appear earnest in their quest for an appropriate opinion. But there also seems to be a desire to over-simplify things into compact, concrete ideologies that can fit readily into preconceived dogmas. Now, I empathize with any who wants life’s issues to be more digestible but it causes me to wonder if in doing so we might be sacrificing a credible, more adaptable view. When the vernacular of life is reduced to simplistic platitudes, how is one to articulate the complexities of truth? Without considered thought, we risk being judged by what we “say”, instead of being heard for what we “mean”.
Consider this. We’ve arrived for a brief visit to a universe that has existed for over thirteen and three-quarter billion years without us. You and I will exist for a relatively fleeting moment, barely a flicker in the measure of what we call time. I arrived in the Anthropocene era in 1949. Suddenly, with unwelcome abruptness, it’s seventy years later and I find myself amongst a generation of elders; a group upon whom I once relied on for guidance in my youth. In that brief interim, between youth and the present, I have found what can be accomplished is limited; yet what we do is still of significance - to ourselves, and to those we share this short journey with. Why? It is because we have a highly developed and fundamental human quality; self-awareness. This gives us agency to respond to our existence. And we are both blessed and cursed by a hardwired drive to create. Our creativity manifests in an ability to manufacture whatever we envision. It is evidenced in our childhood play and mastered in our sciences, our engineering, our arts, and in countless other technologies. We are graced to be builders but can be damned by our ego’s disdain for the consequences of our actions; especially so when it is at the expense of our own long-term wellbeing.
Yet, we do have choices in what we make. We can choose to improve our domain, a world we share and shape, or we can try to satisfy our senses in a gluttonous pursuit of material desires.
Material desire is manifest in the siren-call of the visionless minority who seek short-term profit by reshaping and corrupting our political and financial systems to personal advantage. It is so much easier to just follow such deceits if we, ourselves, are blind to the future. To open our eyes and minds is ...Expand for more
perplexing in its complexity and demanding in our responsibility to others. The effort invites the pain of making choices, of acknowledging consequences, submitting to compromise and making mistakes.
I have learned we must engage in all these things if we are to separate desire from truth. Who has time for such things, we might ask ourselves? Time is virtually all we really have, and yes - there is little to spare. So, do we want to participate in life by giving and engaging, or do we want to just get all we can - while we can? Most of us are likely to do some of both.
In the end, while it may take a hundred years or so for a lucky few to live out their lives, the universe will carry on largely un-phased by our choices. But our world as we know it will not. We know that now as we have never known it before. It is a fundamental truth. For most of us, eight decades or so will more than suffice before we expire; and the universe moves inexorably on, beyond our existence. All the while, issues of ethics are among our most viable tools in the challenges we call life. And the ethical standards we choose to live by will live on and inspire ethical decisions in others, well beyond our time.
Where are you in this timeline; a quarter of a way into your eight decades or so of opportunity, or in your forties and approaching halfway? Perhaps you are even farther along and operating in comforting, patterned ways, feeling less flexible; or even disinterested because you fear futility in trying. Yet at every point in time we need to believe our actions matter. For what matters is truth, and we are the makers of truth for the foreseeable future. Regardless of whether you are just beginning to deliberate, or have contemplated in earnest for the bulk of your life; whether you self-identify as indolent, or activist, apathetic, inspired or a fatalist, we all share the same vital prospects and constraints of time. We each have but one life in which to rise above our reflexive strategies to survive, and elect instead to thrive. Our footprints may only last as long as the dust of our generation but each of us can make choices to give or to take, all the way to our final moment of grace. If we choose to participate consciously, our collective actions will build a platform of integrity for those who come behind us, just as we now live and die; framed by the choices of those who came before. If we seek only personal immediate gain or escape, we will shape an alternate truth; the terminal rungs of a disintegrating ladder, thwarting all other’s future opportunities.
We must think with compassion and act with integrity. It is time to embrace a future without us. Let us choose the continuum for ourselves, our families and for those who follow.
Martin Kim is retired from public service, and active as an artist and essayist.
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