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To build a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?  Dag Hammarskjöld

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. Aristotle

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste. Charlotte Brontë

Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again. Dag Hammarskjöld

This week marks what would be the 112th birthday of the legendary Dag Hammarskjöld, one of the very few persons whose mention still evokes awe inside the UN even if most of his thoughtful wisdom has been relegated to the sidelinesof “quaintness” by a political system that has become much too “inspiration resistant.”

As many of you know, Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash under what are still deemed to be suspicious circumstances.   These have been the subject of General Assembly resolutions and a 2015 Panel of Experts report that has stoked further interest in what we still don’t know about the crash, what intelligence files might still exist that could shine light on what is a yet-unresolved 56 year old tragedy.

It is relatively easy, I suppose, to revere figures from our past as they are no longer around to annoy us or get in our way.   And it is relatively easy to sideline the values-driven perspectives of a Hammarskjöld as the product of a global order characterized by considerably fewer (almost entirely western) centers of political and economic influence than what we know today.   To be clear, the UN of Hammarskjöld’s time had to accommodate far fewer member states represented by far more male delegates.  Beyond the rightful preoccupations of the time with decolonization, the dominant, bipolar power dynamics were focused on how to prevent the early stages of “cold war” from becoming dangerously heated.

But that the values of Hammarskjöld might not any longer be wholly “appropriate” to the activities and constituencies of the UN does not imply that issues of the UN’s culture and purpose to which he pointed should be abandoned outright.  Our dreams and aspiration to clean the messes we failed to prevent and fix what is broken — these still matter.   Our need to embody the courage, forgiveness and other traits of character that we expect from those we deign to lead — this still matters, too.  The importance of aspiring to be more than just “good enough” in these dangerous and treacherous times — this perhpas matters more than ever.

There are places throughout the UN where vestiges of this interest in how we do our general business, including our obligations to one another, remains.  In the Security Council debate this week on African Peace and Security, and during meetings of the Peacebuilding Commission, the Japanese Ambassador both lamented and challenged the current proclivity inside the UN to “chase conflict,” a chase that exhausts human capital, compromises the trust of peoples and states, and creates both massive victim heartbreak and senseless finger pointing by states who never seem to get around to pointing fingers at themselves.

In this current Security Council configuration elected members Sweden and Uruguay are among those that continue to press regularly for a more thoughtful, humane policy culture. Sweden has kept up pressure on colleagues to honor promises to gender equity, to the rights of displaced persons, and to full-spectrum, collaborative engagements on peace and security with the Peacebuilding Commission and other UN and regonal entities. Uruguay for its part has demonstrated a relentless regard for the anxious impatience of the wider UN membership with progress on peace, as well as the will to do what few other state representatives in New York are encouraged or authorized to do – remind the large powers of their occasional duplicities on armed violence, on respect for human rights, on protection of civilians, and on their rush to coercive responses to conflicts that require above all else honest political dialogue.

Beyond the Council, also noteworthy for us this week was a presentation in the Economic and Social Council High-level segment on the eradication of poverty by Fatoumata Jallow-Tanbajang, Minister of Women’s Affairs of Gambia.  The Minister, whose country recently and only narrowly avoided a major crisis of political transition with its related allegations of theft and corruption, could have been forgiven for taking a “fingers crossed” approach to the general implementation of the sustainable development goals, not to mention her country’s own potential to meet their SDG targets.

She did nothing of the sort.  Instead, Minister Jallow-Tanbajang laid out one the most hopeful, inspiring messages of the entire week.  She spoke honestly about addressing the “diaspora” arising in part from years of political turmoil that drained the talent now badly needed at home.  She stressed concrete efforts to bring about social cohesion in a state “that has been divided for too long.”  And, quite remarkably, she advocated for both “freedom” and “happiness” as viable indicators of development success, understanding that the quality of societies is at least roughly equivalent to the quality of the lives of its inhabitants.  As a statement on the importance of promoting a humane and sustainable national culture, this was without peer.

Indeed, there are many times when we find ourselves longing for more of this honest, determined, people-centered discourse. Global Action is fortunate to have among the more diverse cohorts of interns and fellows of any group at the UN.  It is an important commitment for us – a testament both to the vast pools of talent that lie still unrepresented in this world, and the need for this talent to spend enough time inside the UN to determine if there is room for them here, room where they might cultivate their policy voices and become models for the world they are anxious themselves to build.

The answer is often, sometimes wistfully, “no.”

As I understand it, this “no” is not a rejection of the opportunity which the UN presents or the extraordinary learning space it represents; nor is it an indictment of what or how much the UN is doing to engage global threats. There is simply no way, in our view, to argue that the UN is not addressing the most crucial issues of our times, from oceans to nuclear weapons.  It is, though, an open (if respectful) question as to whether the general UN culture is honest enough, thoughtful enough, determined enough, to deliver on its essential promises.  The issue here, certainly for our young people, is not if our policies are pointed in the right direction, which they most assuredly are, but whether our hearts and hands are directed similarly.  This matters to them, as it should matter to us all.

The “dream of a miracle” to which Hammarskjöld attested is hopefully one that has not gone out of style, has not been doused by our political maneuvering and predatory economics, let alone by our institutional incapacity to concede and forgive. As the Gambian minister noted this week, “We have suffered, but we are not crying.  We will stand tall.”  If we are to stop chasing conflicts rather than resolving them; if we are to find the persistence needed to bring the hope of sustainable development to wary and oft-neglected communities; if we are to retain the interest of the young talent that has been attracted by our lofty promises; then we will need to stand taller in this global policy space as well, mastering even more than we have at present the determination to fix what is broken and clean what is soiled.

Security is mostly a superstition. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.  Helen Keller

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Distrust and caution are the parents of security. Benjamin Franklin

It was a pretty good week at the UN for the young people of the world, those who are destined to inherit the consequences of our wars and famines, our grave challenges and too-often incomplete policy responses.

Media headlines have recently focused on North Korea missile launches and G-20 divisions largely involving the United States and climate change, and there were certainly some tense moments this week in the Security Council as US Ambassador Haley threatened colleagues with unilateral action in the absence of a viable, collective response to North Korean “provocations.”

But for the most part, at least at the UN, it was a hopeful time for the planet.  In the Economic and Social Council, Secretary General Guterres outlined his “8 Point Plan” for the UN development system that wisely focuses on service results and less on bureaucratic structures, “more on people and less on process. “  And the Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) hosted two days of important discussions designed to honestly assess and carefully address what was seen by presenters as a growing threat by terrorists to civil aviation.

Beyond this, there were two other events of considerable significance at the UN that would have done well to take greater note of each other.

As we mentioned last week, the UN has been involved in a process to prohibit the development, possession, stockpiling and certainly the use of nuclear weapons.  The so-called “Ban Treaty” was adopted on Friday to thunderous and well-deserved applause.  The 122 states that supported adoption –none of which were weapons-possessing states nor the principle, alleged “beneficiaries” of nuclear weapons “umbrellas” – believe that they have set in motion a process that will eventually lead to the total elimination of such weapons.  Whether that happens or not, whether the treaty ultimately strengthens or weakens the resolve of nuclear weapons states to invest in weapons development and modernization, the adopting states have declared once and for all their rejection of deterrence-based security doctrines; indeed their full independence from the erstwhile allures of nuclear weapons culture. As such, the “space” for that culture has shrunk once more, hopefully soon to be replaced by a security culture that is far more people centered and far less weapons driven.

One of the “complaints” about the Ban Treaty is that it didn’t go far enough when it had the chance to do so, didn’t enact prohibitions that sufficiently covered all aspects of what had become a dominant, pervasive and dangerous nuclear weapons culture.  Some of these alleged deficits were a function of the limited time granted to negotiators; some were surely related to relatively weak structures of governance and accountability within the treaty: and some were surely based on the fear of some that strict and comprehensive prohibitions would only increase the prospect that nuclear weapons states would choose to maintain their distance from the treaty, thus making the goal to which the treaty points – weapons elimination – that much less likely.

Perhaps ironically and at virtually the same moment that the “Ban Treaty” was being adopted in UN Conference Room 1, a complementary event was called to order upstairs. Chaired by Panama on behalf of the Human Security Network, a group of over a dozen member states committed to the full implementation of General Assembly resolution 66/290, this gathering underscored the degree to which human security “recognizes the interlinkages between peace, development and human rights, and equally considers civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.”

All presenters at the session highlighted one or more aspects of these bold and comprehensive linkages. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed reinforced the degree to which a human security framework is well suited to address poverty in all its aspects and manifestations as well as provide a framework for preventing conflict and addressing natural disasters and climate-related impacts.  Other speakers on the panel used the examples of disaster response (Mexico) and refugee flows (Jordan) to underscore the “human security” priorities of sound risk assessment, comprehensive analysis, local capacity assistance, and the cooperative, diverse stakeholder engagement specifically urged by Panama.

We heard only one vague reference to the “Ban Treaty” adoption in this Human Security session, and there was certainly no recognition of the latter in the former.  But from our standpoint these rooms were clearly pulling in similar directions, trying to address not only weapons, but their culture; not only conflicts but their multiple triggers and enablers.  As with the “Ban Treaty,” the large and powerful states were almost entirely absent from the Human Security discussions.  Thus it was left to both rooms –mostly independently of one another–to create signposts towards a more just and hopeful world while exercising only limited control over the consequences of their decisions.

Ultimately, of course, the challenges we face are not just about policy, but also about us, about our creeping inability to tolerate any risk in matters personal, professional and political that isn’t guaranteed to succeed.  We should be reminded that the “daring adventure” that is our collective life requires, in part, people who are willing to take the dare, who are committed to deep thinking and bold action, who are prepared to manage carefully and then acknowledge gracefully the intended and unintended consequences of even our best policy efforts.  Within the political limitations of the rooms in which they found themselves, stakeholders at the UN this week seemed more willing than usual to take the dare, to uphold the truth they behold and manage as best they can the consequences of the truth lying (at least for now) a bit beyond their gaze.

At one of the CTED briefings on aviation safety, one of the few questions posed was asked by one of our Global Action interns, who wondered why we struggle as a community with risk assessment, why we spend so much energy running after threats whose challenges seem always one step ahead. For many of our young people, such questioning corresponds to a deep anxiety – that those at the UN and elsewhere currently in charge of global policy don’t often enough “level” with themselves and the rest of us about the state of global affairs as a precursor to deeper commitments to assessing global risk and promoting resilience – resilience in the form of diverse, local actors (including younger actors) with the skills and resolve to create context-specific analyses and responses to the challenges that affect them most directly.

Such honest “leveling” is important, especially for an often suspicious and cautious generation that wonders if we collectively have what it takes to survive current challenges; but that also wonders if they themselves have what it takes to detour from the straight and narrow highway that older persons have often placed them on and embrace that “daring adventure” wherein lies fresh energies, ideas and experiences.  We will need plenty of all three from this generation – and then some – if we are to continue on our “human security” journey: towards honestly analyzing global trends, making and sharing relevant connections, enabling a more diverse array of stakeholders, and managing consequences when our best policy efforts don’t completely work out the way we planned.

Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him! Ralph Waldo Emerson

The way glass can be molded or blown or cut into any kind of shape made me think about how we as people – our characters or souls – can be shaped or changed by outside influences. Lisa Kleypas

The squirrel that you kill in jest dies in earnest.  Henry David Thoreau

As readers of this space know, we don’t spend much time analyzing national issues per se except when they begin to overwhelm multilateral space, when implications for national behavior create tensions – or lessons – for that space that we feel need to be highlighted.   We seem to be in one of those moments now with respect to the US and its relationship to the global community. Thus on the eve of the July 4^th holiday, we offer a few sobering thoughts on the current state of our wobbly and occasionally destructive national influence.

The departure point for this post is a book that recently crossed my path and then utterly consumed my interest.  “Hitler’s American Model” by James Whitman is a book that I wish I had written, or rather that I wish I had the skill to write.  There is no time or room here for a thorough review of his argument, but in an age characterized by ever-more violent entertainment, gross economic inequalities, apoplectic media personalities and seemingly endless White House images of aging white males and their multilateral hostilities, it is important to take stock of not what we do or fail to do, the influences that our actions and inactions can (and do) have on others.

The premise of the Whitman book is to revisit what was clearly a fascination by German Nazis in the 1930s with what was considered by far too many at the time to be an “innovative” system of race laws – specifically anti-miscegenation laws – that were in vogue in the US and for which the US was dubiously pegged at the time as a “global leader.”   In addition to this particular dimension of influence, Whitman deftly points out the degree to which that fascination spread beyond Jim Crow to the US’s westward conquest of native peoples as well as efforts to maintain “second class citizen” status for some major immigrant groups including Filipinos, Chinese and Japanese.

Whitman both skillfully characterizes this fascination and then carefully delineates the limitations of his analysis.  He does not maintain that Nazi preoccupations represented the only (or even primary) influence to emanate from “New Deal America.” He does not maintain (nor do we) that the US is the source of all racist malevolence in the world.  Nor does Whitman attempt to posit causal linkages between the US “common law” model which reinforced so many efforts to “keep foreign elements out of the gene pool” with what became a mass, grotesque genocidal project aimed at Jews and others.   Ironically, at least in the early years of the Nazi regime, much of US race-based and overtly anti-miscegenation lawmaking was actually deemed “too harsh” by some leading Nazi lawyers, in part a function of the latitude granted to US judges to adjust the law to “real life circumstances,” many such “circumstances” being themselves avowedly and often violently racist.

In telling this difficult story, in positing this uncomfortable relationship, Whitman is claiming not imitation but influence, not “copy-catting” but cutting and pasting.   He is not seeking to blame one state for the conduct of another but is, in an uncomfortably jarring manner, reminding all of us that we bear some deep responsibility not only for what we do, but what our behavior enables in others; not only the damage we create directly via our own initiatives, but the tacit permission to damage that our actions inadvertently or otherwise grant to those within our various “orbits” of influence.

This “news” regarding the complexities and urgencies of influence is not news at all to anyone raising or educating children, settings where occasions for influence are always present and where, as children leave home and school to start their adult sojourns, we are left to ponder whether the content and strength of our influence were indeed calibrated correctly.  Were we the “do as I say, not as I do” parents, the ones who attempted to repair with reproving words the damage caused by our own sometimes willful neglect and self-damaging habits?  Were we the teachers who represented ceilings for students rather than floors and who scorned those who called out our mistakes (in my own case mistakes made several times an hour) rather than applauding them for respecting truth even more than they respect authority?

There is influence-insight here for our geopolitics as well.  Indeed, the continued existence of nuclear weapons is one instance of a security policy grounded in a fundamental hypocrisy:  that the weapons which some states overly rely on for their own national security are somehow grave violations of international law when found in the hands of others.   Indeed, if the current “Ban Treaty” negotiations concluding this week at UN headquarters (negotiations that do not include nuclear weapons possessing states nor many other states whose security is tied to “nuclear umbrellas”) are to truly “move the pile,” it is likely to be in its determination to demystify the general authority and influence of nuclear weapons, undermining both the avowed “need” for these weapons and the signals such weapons send to the rest of the global community. Such “signals” have too-long suggested that our menacing arms race and wildly expensive arms modernization are both self-justifying and worthy of envy by both state and non-state actors alike. In this instance, as is the case with other policies and practices at the UN and in other multilateral settings, we are still pumping out messages to other entities that establish a baseline of influences and permissions that might well fail to serve any national interests, let alone a global interest.

Through our family life, our social policies, our political and legal institutions, and long before the relentless, annoying intrusions of social media, we have been sending complex messages to others, messages that influence what is possible, but also what is permissible.  As the young (still) have their views of the world influenced by families and schools, people from many cultures and walks of life worldwide continue to take their cues from our major global institutions and global capitals. Sadly, some of those contemporary “cues” are coming via the broken politics within and beyond Washington, our unresponsive and predatory economics, our mean-spirited responses to migrants, our massive arms spending, even some of our multilateral policy stalemates and “tone deaf” policy compromises here in New York.

On this 4^th of July, we in the US have much of our own to sort out, including leadership in retreat from global challenges and multilateral institutions, our double-standards regarding the legitimacy of armed violence, attempts to gradually dismantle our “rainbow” and replace it with various “shades of white,” and our ongoing, habitual neglect of the people who grow our food, protect our water, serve in our security sector and have largely (and often needlessly) been left behind by the too-rapid assaults of a globalized world.

Each of these concerns represents both an internal tribulation and a clear message that we send out to others, a message not only about what we are prepared to do but also to what we, tacitly or otherwise, have agreed to lend our permission.   Simply put, we all need to be more attentive to how and what we influence, to better ensure that the messages we communicate have consequences with which we are prepared to live.   The Whitman book is a chilling example of what we as a species remain capable of perpetuating once we delude ourselves into thinking that no one else is paying attention.

In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding. Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost. Kahlil Gibran

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.  George Bernard Shaw

There are many things in the world that make us anxious, and we hardly need to chronicle them for readers of this blog.  We listen every day to some of the best, but much of the worst of the human condition – wars and rumors of wars, states turning against their own citizens, refugees fleeing conflict only to encounter rejection and neglect, oceans becoming receptacles for every incarnation of human wastefulness, children forced to abandon all vestiges of their childhood….

For all of the human-made madness that the UN seeks to address, one of the things that makes us most anxious is the ways in which we now mostly choose to communicate with each other.  In the culture at large, “communication” by whatever means and technology has quickly become associated with a mixture of excessive self-disclosure and ever less-subtle manipulation.  People so often “sell” themselves and their products or programs with little regard for the integrity of their audiences, as though what we are saying is all that truly matters while showing diminished respect for what others might need to hear. “Sharing” is now so often connected to creating an image or brand, to proclaiming ourselves as beings who have fully “arrived,” who are ostensibly already “good enough” rather than possibly just “good enough for now.”

The UN has its own communication malfunctions. We speak in endless acronyms, forcing anyone who enters UN conference rooms to scramble to grasp our institutional short-hand.  We make needless verbal promises about the keeping of peace and the promotion of human well-being which have more rhetorical than practical significance, and which thus tend to evoke at least as much public disappointment as gratitude.  We hold “debates” in the Security Council and elsewhere where no debate actually ensues, where states mostly present bland versions of their national positions without so much as a passing reference to the positions of others.

We are in this space literally buried in words that are too often disconnected from both our erstwhile constituents and from any clear actionable strategies in the world.   We “condemn” misconduct as though that has any demonstrable value in altering state behavior.  We remain “seized” of dangerous situations facing the world, though generally without the urgency or other emotional content which we might normally associate with that word.  We make endless (and at times also interminable) statements that rarely address what has already been said, do not anticipate statements or developments to come, and mostly avoid truly compelling ideas, images or suggestions whose impact might actually “survive” the end of the session.  We craft resolution after resolution to achieve a “consensus” that is mostly akin to a de facto veto and which results in language sometimes heavy on “bark” and almost always light on “bite.”

And we maintain groups of “like-minded” states and NGOs which often have a dubious relationship to the full growth and development of the norms and principles allegedly being defended, “selling” important normative frameworks while sometimes avoiding the changes needed (including the renunciation of our own rhetorical control) to ensure that we “get them right.”

The end result of all these choices — our watered down resolutions, overly facile promises and seemingly endless, forgettable statements by states and NGOs – is a lack of attentiveness to the consequences of our avalanche of words, specifically related to the assumption that some form of legitimate communication has taken place when precious little of the sort has actually happened.

There were many examples at the UN in this busy week of policy – from eradicating trafficking to banning nuclear weapons – where it seemed as though stakeholders were too often talking past each other or, at times, merely talking for its own sake.   One of the more painful of these exercises was in the Security Council last Tuesday during a week that was otherwise largely hopeful and positive for the Council.   In this instance, the focus was on Burundi, a country in the throes of considerable turmoil both internal – including compelling evidence of state-sponsored torture, arbitrary detentions, and mass displacement, and external – including allegations of incitement to violence by Rwanda and a noteworthy breakdown in relations with various parts of the UN system, including and especially with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Burundi has received considerable attention from the international community, including from the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) configuration ably chaired by Ambassador Lauber of Switzerland.  Amb. Lauber was one of the briefers in this Security Council discussion and, along with UN Political Affairs’ Zerihoun, painted a picture that contained elements of hope – mostly related to the robustness of regional efforts to end the violence and restore stability — but was otherwise uncompromising in its portrayal of internal displacement, state-sanctioned rights violations, the closing of “civic space,” and an ongoing lack of state cooperation with both the Commission of Inquiry and key UN agencies.  Council members were largely silent at this session, though most have already voiced similar concerns through the PBC. Uruguay did take the floor to reinforce the main points of the briefing, noting the degree to which the current political stalemates within and outside the country threatened both prospects for future elections and efforts to promote justice for the many Burundians already gravely abused.

When it was Burundi’s Ambassador Shingiro’s time to speak, it became clear to the Global Action contingent in Chambers that speakers were not reading from the same book, let alone being on the same page.  Amb. Shingiro spoke of his “calm” country in which a “culture of dialogue” that can counter “false narratives” was being promoted through stakeholder retreats and conversational cafes.  While reminding the Council that reconciliation needs to be state driven, he also insisted that the problems in Burundi were not related to rights violations – allegations of which he described as “slander” and largely “politicized” –– but primarily to development deficits (which he seemed to blame on a “humanitarian war” and which have, for the record, consistently been discussed in the PBC).  In almost direct contradiction to the testimony of Lauber and Zerihoun, Shingiro alleged “security normality” for Burundi with “functioning democratic institutions from top to bottom.”

My group has been around the UN long enough not to be completely stunned by such massive communications “disconnects” between the Council and a UN member state.  But troubled they were, as was I, by the degree to which smart, savvy, committed diplomats could talk past each other in ways that jeopardize peace prospects and, more importantly, threaten citizens of Burundi with the specter of rights violations and development deficits well beyond the immediate future.

Our common plea – to ourselves, to the UN system, to persons inside and outside the policy realm – is to double down on strategies for clearer and more stakeholder-respectful communication.   We cannot have peace within institutions characterized by so many words trending towards so much misunderstanding; nor can we do all we might to bring peace to a complex world when finding narrative commonalities in our relatively small policy spaces remains such an elusive and even torturous task.

My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. Clarence Budington Kelland

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one. Friedrich Nietzsche

My mother gave me my drive, but my father gave me my dreams. Thanks to him, I could see a future. Liza Minnelli

I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him ‘father.’  Will Rogers

This was a week at the UN when many challenges and hopeful images washed over this community.  The building was filled with persons with various disabilities seeking to solidify their legitimate rights while reminding the rest of us here that not everyone can achieve – or even seeks to achieve – the erstwhile “perfections” of mobility and sensation that are so commonplace in UN spaces.

We also witnessed important discussions inside and outside the Security Council to strengthen efforts to prohibit the production and use of landmines and other improvised explosive devices that strike fear into communities, inhibit development, discourage displaced families from returning home, and create new legions of disabled persons as legacies of our collective failure to address conflict in its earliest stages.

And then there was the beginning of a negotiating process that will result in a “treaty” to prohibit (at a minimum) the production and use of nuclear weapons, hopefully in some not-too-distant future leading to their eventual elimination.

But this is Father’s Day weekend, and it’s my struggle to find a way to honor fathers and relate to such a policy and gender-complex environment as the UN tends to be.  Here goes…..

An article this week in a New York newspaper described the role of most fathers in their families, despite or perhaps due to shifting gender roles, as something akin to a backup musician to a lead singer:  helping to keep the show on track but not a headliner.  “Face it,” Bob Brody warned fathers in fact and prospect, “you’re doomed to lifelong tenure as the runner-up parent. ”

I will never be a parent but, as some of you know, I do dabble as an amateur bird watcher.  Perhaps for this reason, the Brody quote reminded me that birds have a relatively straightforward contract with their young:  providing food, protection and a nudge out of the nest when it is time for them to take off on their own.  We humans have a much more complex relationship to progeny, as any good psychologist will tell you, but even within this complexity there are essential tasks associated with children: taking care of their basic needs, protecting them through their vulnerable developmental phases, and lovingly escorting them out the front door of the family home when it is time for them to find their own way.

Indeed at some point in life, ready or not, it is time for all of us to go forth, to make our own decisions, to stand on our own feet, to love who and how we can, to “rebuild better” what has been broken, to scrape our own knees and find the ointment and bandages needed to bind our wounds and stay in the game.  Despite the false hope often communicated to us through our ubiquitous “devices,” there are dimensions of life – fortunate and unfortunate — that will forever remain outside our control.  Hopefully they will not also remain outside our circle of concern or our capacity to respond with some compassion and effectiveness.  We can indeed response to life’s challenges, even the harsher ones, while keeping our hearts and minds propped open and the switch that powers our hope in the “on” position.

Frankly, I worry about more than a few of the young men in my life and especially here at the UN, their apparent deficits of autonomy and self-determination, their confusion about their value independent of the women, parents and teachers in their lives. I also work within a system displaying a somewhat schizophrenic relationship to gender: the needs of men and boys are now virtually invisible relative to those of women and girls, the latter of which now pop up in virtually every UN policy discussion, from landmines and nuclear weapons to disabilities.  And yet, for all this understandable institutional attention to the deprivations imposed on women and girls in diverse circumstances, the UN remains very “male” space and not often in the best sense – in the genetics of much of its leadership, of course, but also in its proclivity to defend institutional “turf” and its consistently formalized and distancing policy rhetoric.  And to top that off, there are too few persons of either gender who seem terribly interested in changing the system’s culture beyond uncluttering the pathways to their own personal advancement.

Sometimes the burdens of being in this conflicted policy space – like the burdens of life in general — seem too great to bear, or at least too great to bear alone.  But we will never truly know our capacities – how far we can push, how much we can endure, how significant are our powers to heal others and transform systems – unless we put ourselves fully to the test, or until someone who matters to us insists that we take that test. What are sure to be unsettled times ahead will require much of us: stamina, patience, tenacity, dependability and resourcefulness – virtues we must practice diligently in the world for them to take hold and for which a bevy of academic degrees and “next gen” smartphones are no substitute.

In this world of tests that seem so challenging and so prone to end in disappointment, it is perhaps reasonable that so many young people with options to “lay low” would seek to do so.   But we can insist that those under our care get the pushes they require to leave the safety of the nest once and for all, to secure places in the world to test and practice their skills and virtues, hopefully fulfilling at least some of their dreams in the process.  The best fathers I know are happy to cheer on their progeny and other young people throughout this process, to accompany their joys and scrapes and provide perspective when life choices become a confusing maze.  But the best fathers I know also understand that dreams shrivel and die unless they are pursued in the world fully, effectively, collectively, even fearlessly.

And so big thanks goes to fathers – both biological and functional – who insist that the young people they raise and otherwise engage stay committed to full involvment in our anxious world, doing their part and weaving their dreams.  A push from the nest is unlikely to improve a father’s “runner-up” status as a parent; indeed it might reinforce that status in the eyes of some.  But there are few better things we can do for our young people, let alone for the world they are set to inherit, than to insist that they take wing and get on with their journey.