CHANGE

Excerpt from the book “Posterity: Letters of Great American to Their Children.” I thought this was such a timely and relevant letter to refer to. For those of you who are not familiar with Hume Cronyn, he was an actor, writer, producer, and director, whose career spanned nearly six decades. In this 1961 letter, Cronyn is replying to his 16-year old daughter Tandy, who was studying in Germany and wrote:

“…we have to forgive them sometime [for the Nazi atrocities]. If a race of people has to be blamed, why not admit that the humans in general are guilty… Every nation has its black side.”

This is an excerpt of Cronan’s reply, which I thought was thoughtful, reflective, sensitive, and above all else, hopeful. Something we need a lot of now:

“The barbarian lies miserably close under the skin of all of us. I do think that we are inclined to have national traits and characteristics, some of them pretty frightening, just as we have them in families. Our last best hope may be that, as the world grows smaller and we become one community of human beings, our good and our bad may counter-balance one another and that between all families, there may emerge a universal morality and a universal human characteristic superior to any of those in existence today.”

Mr. Cronyn, these words do you proud! Almost fifty years later, we’re still trying to achieve what you so eloquently hoped for…