An open letter to my parents, Thanksgiving 2012.

Since it’s Thanksgiving I’ll say something to you both that I think pretty frequently, but is just kind of hard to work into normal conversation.

Thanks for being literally the best parents I have ever known. I mean that objectively. No other parents have demonstrated such consistent respect, compassion, and ethical fiber. You both have broken a cycle at a personal level that has plagued mankind at a social level since we developed farming. While others are slaves to their past, you two have largely risen above it, and in so doing give me great hope for my own future and my own abilities to transcend such things given sufficient time.

You are both appreciated to a degree that is nearly impossible to express but I feel like now is a good time to make the attempt. Indeed if my actions were to reflect this level of appreciation I would no doubt appear quite (even more so) insane.

Your intentions are the very model of ethical quality. My ethics are as I have said many times my best feature and I copied them wholesale from you both. Though I developed and carried them to logical places you did/have not by applying them to global issues, they are still regardless of that extra development in every sense that matters, yours. They are the greatest gift it is humanly possible to give, and though agencies of our culture seek to ruthlessly and often successfully exploit them for my loss and their gain, I would die before giving them up.

They have provided a sense of self worth and identity that have made it demonstrable objectively if we share axioms that the world is definitively an ever so slightly better place for having had me in it. The value of such a gift, of being able to say such a thing with absolute conviction, is beyond quantification.

And this is but the capitol city of an entire planet of actions worthy of praise and expressions of gratitude. Your unflinching tolerance of me and who I am provides a model for the very apex of logical compassion. In one of life’s more benevolent paradoxes and ironies it is this very tolerance that has made me struggle so hard to be worthy of it. It is the precise opposite of bribery and coercion, and the mechanisms that allow it to function have provided for me a template upon which to build a world view that could well save humanity from extinction if anyone would listen.

But even if they don’t, I know these things down to my marrow and can prove almost all of them. That too is a gift directly from the both of you.

Every compliment I am given, is in truth yours, every improvement I have made to the lives of those around me, is yours. Conversely my flaws and the minor harms I have done are mine alone and stem only from my own errors or weaknesses, which again thanks to you I can gracefully accept, admit, and endeavor to correct.

I love you both literally more than humanity’s future, literally more than my own oxygen supply.

The world deserves to hear more from the both of you, indeed it NEEDS to hear more from you. Echoing the greatness of your intentions is the core of my life’s work, and I can’t help but feel like I am a poor substitute indeed. But such is your choice and for me it only makes this all the more profound because if humanity does ever listen they will wrongly give me the credit for it, yet another gift from you to me of superlative value.

Please accept my sincerest thanks on this Thanksgiving.

Author: Innomen

Writer. Philosopher. Nerd. If you want to know more, contact me. I don't know where it's getting that photo. View all posts by Innomen