Seeing Both Ways
Their voices remain clear and their instruction firm. Memory’s remarkable gift of images and sound bytes helps keep alive people and situations long separated by years and miles, bringing them to mind at a moment’s notice. Decades removed from crossing streets as a child, hand in hand with mom or dad, I can still hear their gentle warning: “look both ways before crossing.” It was good counsel then, and worthy of my repeating to grandchildren today.
Our Roman ancestors may have had something like this in mind as they crossed from one year to the next, their god Janus split in his gaze backward recalling yesterday and forward anticipating the future. Both sobriety and opportunity are captured—the dilemma of life’s transitional moments. Look both ways before…
Years ago I attempted to capture this sentiment in a chapel meditation meant to grab the interest of high school students by imaginatively transporting them to where I knew they’d rather be: behind the steering wheels of their cars. There are few places where the Janus factor is more critical to navigation. In this cockpit of automotive sanctuary we can’t help but notice how enveloped we are in a cocoon of glass surfaces, both large and some small, all that must be utilized prudently for us to get from place to place without mishap.
Each time we sit behind the wheel we take particular notice of the large windshield in front of us along with several smaller, rear-view mirrors mounted to provide us with near 360-degree visibility. The industry standard of an 80 to 20 surface ratio of the windows and mirrors directs our eyes to look ahead much more than to the rear. Even dashboard backup cameras are sized to preserve this balance of vision.
If the windows and mirrors of our automobile can serve as a metaphor worthy of application to our day to day living, then they make clear that we should spend the bulk of our time looking ahead, rather than behind. Eyes on the road, wisely imparted by parents and driving instructors, directs our attention on what is in front of us, giving us our best chance to anticipate and react. At the same time the rear-view mirrors, even as small as they are, confirm that we cannot drive safely, or live well, unless we keep in view the road we’ve already traveled, especially what is approaching us from behind or may revisit us tomorrow. Look both ways…
Traditional parenting and education in America accepted this as a maxim for one generation to impart to the next. As a result our schools taught their students the great lessons of our history and culture, understood through the interpretive lens of contemporary social values and civic responsibilities. The core of the curriculum that once defined American schools included a recounting of both the valiant and villainous, of great wars and noble discoveries, of changing geopolitical boundaries and of documents upon which governments, like our own, were founded. It also emphasized the literature, art and music of our culture viewed as essential to the story of our coming of age in the human race with its many different peoples telling their many different stories. Most importantly education exposed children to the lives and legends of those who made an impact on the world of their time, both with admirable or regrettable legacies. This curriculum was embraced by both private and public institutions from elementary to university levels, each accepting their civic calling to produce graduates who would grow into informed and capable contributors to our society and way of life.
At the same time our schools helped inspire dreamers, planners, experimenters, and visionaries more interested in conceiving and building the future than they were in idolizing and preserving the past. America thus became a great laboratory in which the scientific method fueled invention, mechanization, technological and now robotic innovation. Drivers of progress and discovery not only saw ten feet ahead of them, their gaze extended well up the roads of human possibility, well beyond the orbit of our earthly home, stretching to the very limits of the universe. Our schools played a critical role in stimulating and encouraging the curiosity and unbridled creativity of each ascendant generation.
Education, both in its retrospective and futuristic glances, was regarded as the key to unlock the door to personal satisfaction, economic opportunity, and national progress. Over time this enfranchisement was extended to those for whom social equality was denied, that goal still a work in progress. In keeping with our democratic political processes, the acquisition of knowledge flourished in an environment where free inquiry and critical discourse were widely permitted and constitutionally protected. Past, present and future were laid open to creative exploration and uncensored critique. Until recently the heritage of learning and the legacy of ancestors that so shaped our history, while open to scholarly analysis and reinterpretation, were nonetheless accepted and respected as essential to our self-understanding. Along the way some former truths have had to be jettisoned and many, if not most of our former heroes, have been recast with feet of clay. Rear-view mirror images can be brutally unforgiving. Yet they must never be dismissed or ignored, lest the cultural myopia of any one era make its citizens look and sound as if they were born yesterday.
We drive over these January roads of 2021, littered as they are with billboards and signposts reminding us of the political, medical and social challenges that face us at every turn. The windshield view is as harrowing as it is energizing, so we must look sharply and carefully at what lies in front of us. At the same time we dare not proceed without regard for what lay behind. Looking both ways, however, is not enough. We must, instead, see—intentionally, and consciously attending to what is happening in the present that will, sooner than we think, bring the future we are creating into sharper focus. And just as carefully, we must see what the rear view mirrors of historical recollection can teach us about yesterday’s people, whom we need to hear rather than cancel, understanding them in the context of their times. For when we fairly and honestly engage our past, we learn so much about who we are in the present that can help steer us wisely and safely on the roads that are ours to travel in our time.
