“How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world!” — Anne Frank
There I am, preparing for an evening full of good food and merriment, a dinner party for my friends and family, but instead of moving as fast as possible through my pre-party chores, I’m searching for my garden shears and heavy lead crystal vase, and arranging the cut flowers brought as a gift by one of the guests. It’s a lot of trouble to go through when there are many other things to be done. I sigh, thinking I suppose they mean well, but if my grandmother were still alive, she would be telling me they did not. Even dealing with throwing out dead cut flowers and the water meant to sustain them over the next week will be a hassle. I will need to rearrange those that are left in the vase the ‘gift bunch’ first called home. It will be the gift that goes on taking.
No, this is not important enough to take the place of what I must do before guests arrive, but as the flowers were a gift of sorts, I feel I have a responsibility to take care of them as best I can. I hate doing this and have explained many times to the men in my life why arriving with cut flowers before the hostess can see to all the other things she must do is not a gift but a curse. Yet it’s not just the lack of understanding in the male of the species that causes this trial, for in truth there are men and women alike who make the same thoughtless gesture.
Why do those who dump this obligation on their friends not see and appreciate the error of their ‘gift’? Because no one taught them and they do not live lives where the nature of their thoughtlessness is made clear to them. In a country where the president states he can get away (easily) with shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, there is clearly not going to be a shared responsibility to look out for each other. Who cares if we make more work for our friends who already have more than enough?
My grandmother was the one to teach me to care about the little things and people no one else paid attention to. Who will teach our grandchildren? Some of us might, but who will teach their grandchildren? If we can’t somehow turn our stumbling society around in the next decade, no one will care anymore. Is this like putting your fork and knife neatly together on the side of your plate when you’re through eating? my granddaughter asks. Yes, I respond. She’s been taught (I hope) that we do that, so they won’t end up clattering to the floor when they slide off the plate in a messy heap as someone clears away her plate.
Who will teach the next generations of Americans to come? How can they mean well if they don’t have any sense of responsibility for each other? Working doubly hard to lead by a different standard of care in the next decade is going to be an imperative. Meaning well is not going to be good enough.