ARE WE PREPARED TO LEAVE A POSITIVE LEGACY TO OUR CHILDREN?

Dr. Tesfa G. Gebremedhin

West Virginia University

It is often a traditional practice every where that family members of the deceased try to memorialize and cherish their loved parents or grandparents by keeping valuable jewelry, clothing, photographs, letters, and scrap newspapers, or keep the memory of them with words written after their names on the tombstones such as: “Beloved Father or Mother” and “Beloved Grandfather or Grandmother,” or expressions written as “A Wonderful Parent and a Great Leader” or “He or she contributed much to the Community.” These phrases elaborate to any reader a sense of what kind of person the deceased was when he or she was living. At times, the kind words written on the tombstone may capture how others regarded or what they thought of the deceased person, which might stem from the deceased person’s own personality, self-esteem, self-image, and triumph. Like wise, it is commonly observed that children and grandchildren will always store in their minds the precious legacy of their parents and grandparents and cherish them as priceless treasures in their lives. The legacy inherited by children and grandchildren from their parents and grandparents could be in the form of important stories, wisdom, love, caring, and friendship. It is evident that our legacy wields tremendous power to influence the lives of our children and grandchildren.

What will be remembered of us by our children and grandchildren after we are deceased? What important memories do we want to leave to our children and grandchildren? What words or phrases do we want written after our names on our tombstones? What role do we play in preserving and ensuring the transfer of our cultural heritage, history and ethnic identity as a legacy to our children and grandchildren? A legacy can be generally defined as anything handed down from ancestors as inheritance, the worth of which goes far beyond that of economic wealth. It is a portrait that we have painted of ourselves in the minds of our children regarding our accomplishments, character, valor, courage, and integrity. Legacy, in this context, includes the social values of tradition, norms, cultural heritage, history, family honor, wisdom, and wit inherited from parents and grandparents. We should not dare to ignore the fact that our children can inherit from us a positive or negative legacy. Both destructive and constructive words and deeds are pounded into their thoughts and subconscious minds. It is likely evident that well-disciplined families produce well-disciplined children and dysfunctional families produce dysfunctional children. It is highly probable that abused children often become abusive parents. Children of divorced parents are more likely to have a failed marriage. Success begets success and failure begets failure. The tide of negative legacy and the spirit of failure perpetuates in a family line, and keeps getting passed down from generation to generation unless the family chooses to rise up to break the negative cycle. I believe the Eritrean scholars and organized communities can play an important role in changing the direction of the tide from the negative to the positive side.

A legacy is our continued influence on our children and people in our communities. It is intangible inheritance that we leave for the people we love in our lives. Our legacy whether it is positive or negative is not something we create at the end of our lives; rather, it is fashioned and accumulated day by day by our words we speak and actions we make which are directly related to what we positively or negatively think. Our words and actions are built in the minds of children slowly over time. We need to remember that our legacies are created over time, so each word we speak and action we take weaves a thread in the tapestry of our legacies. We should be challenged to think about the legacy we are creating for our children and those people around us in our own communities. We need to ask ourselves seriously if our current legacy is what we would like for it to be. We should be encouraged to consider what legacy our life will leave and to work to ensure that it will be positive. Most of us hope that we will be remembered for our positive qualities, not for negative characteristics we show and pass down to our children. Such positive qualities include a legacy of acceptance and concern for others, of love and caring of our families, and of a commitment and dedication to more socially just communities. We all hope to be remembered as good parents and good community members who should tremendously value and instill moral character, discipline, education, and hard work in our children’s body.

Eritrea is a country with a rich cultural heritage of its own ethnic diversity. Parents and grandparents are the living link to the past to tell our children and our grandchildren the story of the liberation struggle waged in Eritrea; sacrifices paid by our gallant fighters for the sake of freedom, justice and peace; and tell our own history in our own perspective as well because every Eritrean has a story to tell. But, nowadays, we no longer live in one community, state or even country. In fact, many of us brothers and sisters, let alone live with our parents grandparents in Eritrea, we are not lucky to live in the same state, or even in the same country. Though parents and grandparents live in Eritrea, many families live in Europe, North America, Middle East, and Australia. Not long ago, the vast majority of grandchildren in Eritrea could walk to see their grandparents because families lived in the same village. Today, many family members, particularly those in Diaspora, are spread throughout the world more than ever before. New technology and faster and more efficient transportation facilities may help us to stay in touch with family members in Eritrea. However, the cost of travel, though a few of us take full advantage of this technology, may be prohibitive for many family members to frequently go back to Eritrea, thus limiting strong bonding relationships between grandparents in Eritrea and grandchildren in Diaspora.

We, as parents and possibly grandparents in Diaspora, have the advantage of looking back and remembering what it was like for us as we traveled through life’s stages in Eritrea and in Diaspora, the stages our children and grandchildren are now in. The hindsight we enjoy is called wisdom and wit mostly inherited from our own parents and grandparents. Wisdom is a culmination of experiences accumulated through life. We have spent our whole life collecting experiences for ourselves. Why can’t we help our children and grandchildren inherit the wisdom through our own experiences? Why don’t we take some bumps of life out of the road for them by telling them of our own experiences? Our children and especially our grandchildren should have a wonderful opportunity to learn from our experiences. Wouldn’t it be nice if our children and grandchildren could somehow learn from our bumps and not have to experience them directly? Why can’t our children and especially our grandchildren be taught to avoid many of the difficulties we experienced and guide them in the proper direction? If only we could just take the time to teach them, we could make a big difference in their lives. The torch we would like to pass on to our children and then to our grandchildren will light the way to the future of their lives. A good future requires that our children and grandchildren learn the lessons of the past and avoid the mistakes we made in our lives.

Children inherit not only the legacies that their parents and grandparents impart but also the void that is left by what was withheld. So if we, the parents, do not share our stories, we leave a void that may never be filled. We should honor our past ancestors by passing on the knowledge we have learned from them. When we are actively involved in our children and grandchildren’s lives and hear their concerns and expressions, their human experiences and stories, we contribute to the ongoing river of life by teaching them their cultural heritage and make them aware of their ethnic identity. This river of live continues on as a replica of our own life built by our parents and grandparents and a legacy from us to our children and grandchildren that follow. So can we really be good role models to our children and our children to be good role models to their children? Can we help our children and grandchildren learn their social values and heritage? Can we as concerned parents somehow pass on the legacy to our children and grandchildren that we have about their cultural heritage and ethnic identity? Cultural heritage is not something we have. Cultural heritage is something we do. Our cultural legacy cannot enrich us if it is not brought to life in the hearts and minds of the next generation who are our children and grandchildren. I believe we, as concerned parents and grandparents, can do all these things and find new energy, commitment and cooperation in our own organized communities.

Many of us today are blatantly and unashamedly living for ourselves when many of our friends and people of our own country have family problems, be it conflicts with their spouses or problems with their children. It is so hard to see others when our eyes are focused on ourselves only. We seem to be not interested in our own people, otherwise we should be prompted to get organized and participate actively in our own communities where we could help each other in so many ways. We pretend that we do not have the time to help others in need of our support and understanding. Our political squabbles and lack of interest in each other are spilling over into our relationships with our own families and with one another in our communities. These negative attitudes will obviously leave a destructive legacy to our children. We need to understand that we affect generations to come with the decisions and actions we make today. It is important to remember that each future generation should go further and better than the current generation. We need to look beyond where our children are now in order to know and aim where we want them to be. If we want to save our children from the various problems they are in and pass down our positive legacy to them, we must get our minds off the quarrels and squabbles and start trying to figure out what we, as a community can do for our children and grandchildren.

It is commonly observed that our Eritrean communities in Diaspora, particularly in North America, are infested with conflicts, arrogance and intolerance, and totally engaged in a zero sum game. Eritreans in Diaspora are short of humbleness and tolerance and show negative attitude towards each other. Regardless of these petty animosity and turmoil, there is only one way of breaking this vicious cycle of personal anguish and community destruction. We need to have a positive attitude and to be active role models for our children and our communities. To do that, it just takes a small personal sacrifice in terms of time, commitment and understanding. As Martin Luther King said, “We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools.” Our political ideologies may separate us, but our dreams for our children and our adherence to our ethnic identity can bring us together in the form of Eritrean communities. We need to realize that without a sense of caring and understanding for one another, there can be no sense of Eritrean communities and consequently, there will not be a continuing generation of Eritreans in Diaspora. If we lose the battle in our minds and convince ourselves that we don’t have the chance to establish Eritrean communities that can bring us together, we have to expect to observe our children doomed with no way out for survival. The question to all Eritreans in Diaspora is do we want to be on the side of community development and the survival of our children, or to be on the side of community destruction and the disappearance of our next generation? If our response is positive, we need to bring ourselves together and work together with harmony in order to leave a positive legacy to our children and grandchildren.

It has been boldly said in many literatures that within the ashes of adversity are sometimes sown and harvested the seeds of prosperity through hard work, integrity and sense of community. Like wise, we need to adhere to these tenets and build solid and formidable families and organize strong and successful communities on common grounds within the ashes of the lingering skirmish squabbles and quarrels among ourselves. Sensible comments about this article can be forwarded to my email: tgebrem@wvu.edu. It is also a noble gesture to share your own perspective and wisdom to your fellow Eritreans by sending your responses to the web sites. Thank you and God bless us all!