Green Hills Rotary

2005-2105 ROTARY BENEDICTIONS

Green Hills, Nashville, TN

Club 26001, District 6760 June 15, 2005

To A Future Generation From A Time Past,

One hundred years ago, we were Rotarians. Our tale is told, although yours is yet being written. With the humility that comes from our present condition, we address you, our future, with these reflections on our time and lives as Rotarians.

You will peruse this correspondence, we understand, on the eve of Rotary's second centennial, in the year 2105. So in the spirit of friendship we offer this modest gift of thoughts from a past century. We trust that by knowing where you come from, you will better know who you are; for throughout antiquity mankind has found profound value in discerning such basic but elusive truth.

In our age, like most others, we aspired to lofty goals. Our generation followed the anguish of two great world wars, a depression, and devastating epidemics; and we applied ourselves to technology and economic advancement perhaps as a bribe to our past. But despite our cures for disease, towering corporate monoliths, and inchoate understanding of the very mechanism of life itself, we remained uncertain whether our world was ever more kind, happy, or fulfilling than before we found it.

Ours was a time of unprecedented, explosive change. The culture, sciences, gender and racial relationships, laws, and bureaucracies transmogrified from those familiar forms with which we began life. Many of us were born into a world where the Internet, the computer, the television, and even electronics itself were unknown. The genetic components of life were an unqualified mystery; jet or rocket travel subjects of unalloyed fancy; and credit cards as well as plastic itself imaginary.

We became better informed than we once were, but were nonetheless keenly aware and duly humbled by the limitless knowledge we lacked. In our time astrophysicists talked of dark matter and dark energy as being the primary components of the universe but had no apparent perception of what these were. Gravity was a multi-dimensional curiosity felt by us but not even dimly comprehended. Quantum mechanics was incompatible with General and Special Relativity. We spent vast sums on diplomacy, and international organizations of peace, but war and terrorism continued. Greater sums yet were spent in medical research. But people still died agonizing deaths from cancer and other harsh genetic debilitations. And we could never determine when, or if, it was ever right to end or create life.

Like Dr. Victor Frankenstein of the 19th Century we flirted with the great forces that formed and destroyed lives. It was an exciting time, despite all the answers we lacked, for we lived in an age of limitless invention; and much of our fiction doubtlessly became your common science

But change and the new destructive powers it revealed seemed to have unnaturally stressed our generation, deluged it with information, and to some extent at least, created a looming apprehension of the future. Many mistrusted the new world which was forming before us and in which you now find yourselves.

We wondered what few things remained to anchor us, as so much of our world became virtual, expendable, and superannuated. People struggled to find time for each other, and principles to live by. At times, it seemed as if our generation had ushered in a season of impermanence where technology, ideas, institutions, and relationships were temporary and inconstant – work for the wind.

That was the background to our age, when we were Rotarians. Our goal as Rotarians, therefore, was to know, and to hold fast to, the simple things of value in men's and women's lives. Like our other sister clubs, we attempted to form stronger bonds of understanding with Rotarians both locally and internationally. We enjoyed social settings, weekly breakfasts of business leaders, community projects, and international exchanges, all in the hope of better connecting people and transforming strangers into friends. Rotary was composed of community business leaders, so we strived to preserve ethics in business.

Ethics, moral duties, and our obligations to one another are potent forces because from them has come our unique sense of trust, respect, and fairness to one another. These forces built our nation by uniting our many diverse cities, counties, and states into one great republic, with principle and purpose.

Sadly, however, the newspapers of our time were saturated with stories of how people's concepts of ethics were changing – like technology itself – from their basic forms into something scarcely recognizable. Following the laws was one thing, but doing right seemed more difficult than ever.

Concededly, America, like any other nation, has always had its share of the unscrupulous. But we knew that our country was somehow different not too long before us. People were taught the difference between right and wrong at an early age, and no one resorted to lawyers, philosophy professors; government agencies; psychiatrists; or Hollywood producers for answers.

It was to their parents, and grandparents that they turned. And each night they received lessons in life at a simple dinner table: the original `accredited' American university.

People's sense of community was also different once: we truly needed each other; and people were a little closer, perhaps because they had to be. Reputations mattered. No one could escape culpability by drifting off into a sea of credit card numbers, faceless phone directories, or non-locatable web-sites.

Our predecessors expected employers to take responsibility for their employees – to honor and respect those who had given much of their lives in faithful and assiduous service to a company. And employees – the good ones at least – were expected to honor their employer, trust it, and stay with it both in good and in bad.

Money was always important. But once upon a time there was more than money; and something seemed to change within our very generation.

Our governments proliferated complex legislation as we attempted to force people, corporations, and bureaucracies to be accountable. But with each passing enactment people seemed less sure of their true course. Whom to trust? Whom to blame? Whom to tax?

For some of us, people appeared overwhelmed on a massive scale. We were drowning in news and information, much of it disturbing. We had a billion laws. But a billion laws created a billion loop holes; a billion law suits; a billion taxing, enforcing, and adjudicating bureaucracies; and, of course, a billion attorneys.

As Rotarians we believed that, more than ever, the world needed one simple heartfelt law, revered and safeguarded by us and handed down to you our next generation: "Treat others the way you yourself would want to be treated." The golden rule is this, and always has been, notwithstanding the current adage that `those with the gold rule'.

The golden rule is the quintessence of fairness and ethics and applies to all aspects of our lives. We must endeavor to treat friends, family, strangers, clients, customers, constituents, and even enemies – the entire compass of mankind – the way we ourselves would want to be treated. By so doing, we build fair and profitable relationships that continue growing long after our dealings are past.

The way we conduct business defines not only our profitability, but also – and more importantly – who we are; who our parents and grandparents were; and who we will become as a community. Ethics, therefore, in business is vital in every age because communities, like individuals, that stand for nothing, live for nothing.

While we lived, it was tempting to delegate our responsibilities to others; and perhaps that's why change so overwhelmed us. Lawmakers couldn't fix everything for us, nor do we suspect they ever will for your generation. Change had to come from within; not forced upon us by others.

And that is why in our time we were proud to serve as Rotarians. The Rotary preached by doing, by leading – not by forcing. We wanted not to be an organization about words, but about days well lived. Days honestly lived. Life expressed through the service to others in business – at a profit – but with integrity.

We are known to this brief world by the manner in which we live, both in success and in failure. Rotary reminds us that business is a major component of the greater expression of our lives. By our actions we communicate; by our business we communicate.

If we truly put into example those virtues which we acknowledge in the Rotary's four part test – truth, friendship, service, fairness – then in a world mad with ebbs and surges we have anchored ourselves to something solid. Something real. Something lasting.

This is the great gift of a good life, and we pray that in some form, be it ever so humble, it will have been passed from us to you.

Finally, we acknowledge with wistfulness and regret, that by this communication you will know something of us, but we nothing of you. For we doubt that there will ever exist such technology in man's mortal grasp capable of transcending the unfathomable gulf that separates one world from the next – the world to which we have gone.

But we trust in humanity; it's dauntless imaginative spirit, and its limitless capacity for good. To be sure, during our own time there were many dark shadows cast upon the planet. But our lights were always stronger in the contrast. Do not therefore curse the darkness in your own moment. Be bright lights through your love and service to each other. By these acts we will someday know you, just as subsequent generations surely will.

Though we are gone, have faith that you are not alone. You are cared for, just as all mankind has been, and will continue to be.

God bless.

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