The challenges that we face are complex and numerous.
This moment in history has given us a broken health care system and an awareness of the energy crisis.
Our brothers and sisters are on the front lines of two wars in a region that has been fighting for more than a century on the other side of the world. The rest of us are on the front lines of an economic upheaval that threatens our way of life. While the country struggles, blame is distributed and fingers are pointed, but to us, our generation, there is no time for blame. We have this time to begin our life’s work.
Our grandchildren and great grandchildren will not look upon Tom Brokaw’s WWII era heroes quite the same way we do. The struggles of that time period will seem a world away. It is our history that they will read. It will be our success and failure that they will recognize and our action to improve upon the world which we have been given that will speak to our legacy.
Already, our peers are making the changes we need. Rallying in Lansing to show support for funding of the Michigan Promise Scholarship. Organizing food drives and charity events for the less fortunate and eliminating diseases. We will demand a clean earth and forgo immediate wealth with the understanding that the long term gains will be far greater than we can imagine.
In this pinnacle of our soon to be history, we will stand strong. We will remind the generation preceding us that the earth is in capable hands. We will teach our posterity that his gift of freedom is not to be taken for granted.
We are the generation that will treat the ill; all of them. We are the generation that will define the new system of environmentally feasible and renewable energy. We are the generation that will bring peace to the middle east and stabilize and reverse the economic downturn.
The challenges are great and many, but this is our time, our opportunity. We will be the era our grandchildren will read about, the generation that they look to as models of integrity and grace.
We will be the next greatest generation.