All the Future in Your Hands
Hello, I have been thinking and talking a lot today about a child far away…
Tonight, I ran across this poem in a free Margaret Mead book I found, -Blackberry Winter: my earlier years-…
I am comforted even in such hard times to be glad for giving the freedom needed for my child to become all she can, needs and wants to be for a life that is not my own to choose.
Perhaps this will give solace and new insight to another parent who misses a child?
(untitled) I’m going to call it: All the Future in Your Hands
That I be not a restless ghost Who haunts your footsteps as they pass Beyond the point where you have left Me standing in the newsprung grass,
You must be free to take a path Whose end I feel no need to know, No irking fever to be sure You went where I would have you go.
Those who would fence the future in Between two walls of well-laid stones But lay a ghost walk for themselves, A dreary walk for dusty bones.
So you can go without regret Away from this familiar land, Leaving your kiss upon my hair And all the future in your hands.
January 1947 by Margaret Mead
www.iup.edu/publicrelations/Inside/2001/SEPTEMBER/#bateson
Now, doesn’t she sound like someone who gained deeply from that mother’s gift of freedom?
As the daughter of internationally known anthropologist Margaret Mead, Bateson lectures throughout the world and has been a lifelong advocate of the necessity to develop a deeper appreciation and understand of other ways of life in order to be better equipped in a challenging and changing world.
Bateson is not only well known throughout the United States, where she is the Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University. She is also known in Iran, where she has been the University of Northern Iran Dean of Social Studies and Humanities. She is also the president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York City.
Bateson’s presentation will focus on our society becoming more diverse and subject to more rapid change and what kinds of communication can hold us together, and what are the available patterns for dealing with difference, building on curiosity.
Immediately following the presentation, there will be a book signing.Bateson has written and co-authored numerous books, including “Composing a Life,” “With a Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson,” “Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred,” “Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way” and “Thinking AIDS.” Her books may be purchased at the HUB Co-op Store and will be available that evening.
“For all of us, continuing development depends on nurture and guidance long after the years of formal education,” Bateson said, “just as it depends on seeing others ahead on the road with whom it is possible to identify.
“A special effort is needed when doubts have been deeply implanted during the years of growing up or when some fact of difference raises barriers or undermines those identifications, but all the unfolding experiences of life that present new problems and requires new learning.”
Bateson has also taught and researched at Harvard University, Northeastern University, Damavand College (Tehran), Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Spelman College.
She is married to J. Barkev Kassarjian and has one child, Sevanne Margaret Kassarjian.