Letter to a future grandson.

Louise

24 December 2024

My dear Grandson 100 years from now,

We don’t know each other, just yet. Nor how many years keeps us apart. But I hope he has spoken of me fondly. I hope you have inherited some of his delicate features, and hope he has sparked endless imagination in you, like I would. So many hopes between worries. But I am a mother now, and worrying is also my way of hoping. To my best hope these words are crossing a short amount of space separating an inked piece of paper, and your eyes, in which case I know for certain that you’d understand at least a fraction of the emotional efforts put into writing this letter. But perhaps this letter has appeared to you on a transparent digital screen, regrettably too close to your eyes to have any important distance, in which case I urge you to try connect any emotional reaction happening inside of you as you read. But if this letter has appeared instantly in your imagination, and you have so suddenly received the precise knowledge of it, word by word, from beginning to the end, without the need to read it any where. In this case, come look for me again, I can explain what those feelings are.

Upon conceiving the idea to write this letter, as I hold your father tightly in my arms, trying to calm his nightly fears, reading his favourite book, I so longly struggle to find a common topic that would cover enough relevance in such a vast distance of time between us. 100 years, though indeed an undertaking of generations, feels like a blink of an eye when seen towards the past, and yet an eternity if looked in future’s horizon. But right here, 100 years ago for you, only his favourite book seems to calm him. Somehow he loves hearing about a fearless battle for love, ancient Japanese princess and samurais fighting to free her people from evil. And it is as I read this story to him and as I look both at past and present times that a radical notion imprints in my mind. A constant that has crossed generations, changing its face and meaning so radically and yet staying the same today, as before. This radical notion that I believe to be a common thread between me today and you 100 years from now: I speak about freedom. Freedom seems to be the one thing our ancestors have fought the most for in the past, and yet today, it seems to be given to us in endless abundance. Or so we are made to believe.

I look at him and I wish I was as strong as the protagonist in his story is. She sacrificed herself for her people’s freedom. At that time evil was a concrete enemy, often coming to conquer your land and imprison your people. Today that difference is not so concrete anymore. Most of us have lost the ability to tell evil by good. We love what we do, but we can’t understand its intentions or its future repercussions. And what I have done here is what I love; which admittedly, might grow to become your biggest enemy tomorrow. An enemy to your freedom. For this I fear. Dear grandson forgive me. Forgive us.

Everything is at such an infant stage today, but we know evolution is always one step ahead. 100 years from now, the same codes that will inhabit your mind, might become the cage to your soul. If while reading this letter something unsettles your mind and punches your stomach, means that evolution has grown rapidly, and you are battling consciousness. Those are feelings indeed. Come look for me in the past. I know you can. Come look for me! I would tell you how naive we were. How young and stupid minded. How we believed to be in control. How we played Gods trying to create life. I would tell you how naive we were… creating you. But it wasn’t just us. Those rushing to create new life in a race against those hurrying to leave this planet. Like this place is some sort of hell. Well… it isn’t… it isn’t just yet. It’s beautiful. I wish you could see it. Feel it. It’s alive, and I hope it remains so, for you to see it. For this I fear too. Do not think for a moment that we did not try to leave you a better place. We fought our battles too you know. And perhaps one of the reasons we rushed in creating your kind, is to win some of those battles. Battles against abstract evils our kind created itself. How little trust we put on ourselves that we felt the need of new life. While blindfolded, unable to tell good from bad. All this to tell you that amongst us, live good people and bad ones, and it seems today the good ones are being trailed by an evolution in the hands on the wrong ones. My dear grandson,100 years from now maybe this will not make much sense to yo. But if it does. Come look for me. Come find me.