Tomorrow's people will not tolerate injustice and prejudice. Nor will they condone violence.
Tomorrow's people are today's children: the privileged generation who have at their disposal all the tools required to build a dignified and fruitful future for themselves.
Today's parents, more than ever before, are better equipped to provide their children with the adequate guidance, care and resources necessary to ensure their children's effortless rite of passage into tomorrow.
Today's children have access to almost all of human knowledge, past and present, at the touch of a button, or more precisely, a touch on a smart phone's screen.
Today's children need never go to sleep with unanswered questions repeat-playing in their minds; as I had to. No more "ask your dad when he gets home" or "not sure son, ask mum".
I remember the frustration and sense of helplessness when I couldn't get an instant answer to what I considered an important question.
Sometime later mum bought me an encyclopaedia, followed by the biggest dictionary I had ever seen and an Atlas bulky enough to make my young arms ache after five minutes of bedtime reading. Mum also paid for my weekly editions of Insight and a number of other scientific magazines.
If only my mum could have told me then to "google" it she would have saved herself time and money.
But that was yesteryear.
For my thirteenth birthday mum bought me a Brother Typewriter. The best present ever.
I typed my poems, song lyrics, extracts from books and magazines and just about every thing else that entered my mind. Within weeks I had to ask mum to buy a replacement ribbon; red and black and very messy to instal.
How I loved that typewriter! A love affair that lasted until three years later when I first set eyes on a word processor.
How I miss mum.
Today's children have it very different. No real effort required to learn and feed their curiosity. Instant answers. Short-lived fads and crazes that disappear overnight and with the dawn of something new.
No three year love affair with a typewriter, or an encyclopaedia.
No, I wouldn't swap it.
I am privileged to have belonged to yesterday's young generation. Just as I am privileged to be here today, to bear witness to the incredible advances in technology and lend a helping hand to tomorrow's people.
:)
