Warnings

Which Will (I hope) Encourage You to Listen & Challenge

POSTING 3: Warnings

I am (far?)
more
than a half-century
older than you
(assuming you are
a college undergraduate). 

This half-century +
is the biggest
difference
between us,

I am not
smarter
or wiser
or more
moral.

Just as you
are working 
     worrying and 
     hoping 
I have been
working. worrying and hoping
probably about the same things 
as you,
since before
your parents
were born.

I am you
near the
end of your life.


Also, please note:
Some  
of whatI tell you
must 
be wrong.

I don’t know
what it is;
if I did, I 
would fix it.

But the realities
I address
are too complex
and contradictory
for all of my
ideas
to be correct.

What must be
added, cut, clarified,
or changed?—restated, rethought
rejected or revised?

That burden
falls
on you—so
challenge
doubt
question
fact-check
and 
pause to argue.


A third warning:

I will ask
many questions 
that have no
final, right-or-wrong 
answers,
but which 
cannot be ignored.

Such questions
—and the answers they demand—
test 
and help define
Democracy,
while offering opportunities
to strengthen skills
that make a free society
possible.

NEXT SUNDAY: THINKING IN TIME