Accountability is the beginning, of course. We need to be accountable to ourselves and to others for our lives; anything less is a dereliction, a refusal to engage life fully. And to be accountable one must have a way, a path, or a plan.

In many ways, then, accountability is the opposite of depression. It is a moving through space, a purposeful traveling, rather than treading water in a muddy pool. Since I started this project with George, I also took on copywriting responsibilities at a local marketing firm. For the past two months, their assignments have consumed me. Deadlines, last minute needs, editing, and editing again, mostly for major real estate developments. It has paid pretty well, too. As a trade-off, however, I have placed George on the backburner. With George, there are no deadlines. No must-haves. Yet, my temporary dismissal of not only his tale but of my true calling showed me where I belong, and what I have been insecurely clinging to all these years. Business has a general certainty in it regardless of what the financial pundits will proclaim; art never does. Neither does parenthood.

We understand that the future is not entirely predictable or certain, and that the further into the future that we try to make our best guesses, the less the certainty.

Newness and novelty are usually thought of as “nice” surprises, while uncertainties are potentially more ominous. Accounting practices have been developed to deal with business uncertainties, which can generally be expressed as a discount rate. A good or service delivered at some time in the future is not valued as highly as the same good or service delivered now. The difference between these two values increases with the time between now and that future event and also with the perceived level of the uncertainties. This estimation of uncertainties is very subjective.

It is in the subjectivity of uncertainty where fortunes are made or lost.

In a society that quantifies the present value of a future asset, I think it is appropriate to examine our attitudes and beliefs about youth with that same language, even if it is to ultimately discard that language as inappropriate.

We often look at youth as a future asset, a promise to be delivered sometime in the future. If we do that at all, we need to acknowledge that we have, in fact, discounted youth. The only question is, at what discount rate?

Spending nine days in New York City for the Thanksgiving holiday heightened all my worst self-insults: that I was never good enough to make it in the Big Apple, the only place on Earth worth making it. My high school and college friends/acquaintances are climbing to the heights of their fields there. They can use the word “millions” familiarly, and make conscious choices to eschew buying what they can off-handedly afford. They have exchanged fraternity raves for charity balls. Their homes are bank accounts. Growing up, my family had more than I could have ever desired, and I wished of nothing more materially. Not wishing for it caused me to escape it as an adult.

My professional timing was perfect in multiple fields: healthcare consulting, hedge funds, the Internet, alternative energy. Had I the confidence to place bets and ride the wave with any of them, had I the focus to zero in on one occupation, I would be a very wealthy woman today. Each time, however, my longing for love, affection and sanity blind-sighted me, and set me off on other roads. I wasn’t looking for money then. I didn’t know how to. Somehow I assumed the money would always be there, or would come eventually, or didn’t truly matter. Surely I was right on all accounts, and yet over the past six years, since I’ve located love, affection, and sanity, I have assaulted myself for not going to battle for the big bucks. It is the easiest of measuring sticks, and what is a society without its measuring sticks?

Historically, societies have inducted their youth into adulthood at the time of their sexual maturity, to regenerate and carry on the family name. When I know with some certainty that my life will be much as my father’s, just as his was much as his father’s, then I do not much discount the future value of the things of his life, such as his shovel, plow and musket, his land and home. They are as valuable to me now as they will be in the future when I stand in his place. My father’s habits, customs and rituals will become my own, and I value them now as I will then.

There is a symmetric relationship. If youth do not discount their own futures, then society at large will not discount its youth.

We have been living at our new home in Redstone for a week now. We don’t have any cell phone reception here, and TV and Internet are only accessible via satellite, which we have yet to activate. With windows accentuating the twenty foot ceilings, we are surrounded by mountains, evergreens, aspen trees and towering peaks. On clear nights, we sit side-by-side, gazing at Orion’s Belt, Sirius – the brightest star in the sky, man-made ships soaring through space, the waxing moon illuminating Hawk’s Peak. Only in our thirties, hopefully not even mid-life, are we allowed to exist like this? People labor their entire careers to retire to a place like this, and yet we are here now. I strangely envy the frenetic ratrace of the cities – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago. Am I the weak one, hiding out from the madness, or the intelligent one safeguarding my family from America’s lost center? The presidential campaigns are full of lies and dirty tricks, the dollar is tumbling, real estate bankruptcies prevail – the game of domestic and global competition doesn’t seem to be much fun, and yet they keep dealing the cards, projecting satisfaction while unraveling on therapists’ chaises.

There is another form of society, more resembling our own, where I know that my life will not be much as my father’s. The things that make his life useful and productive will not be the things that make my life useful and productive, and the habits, customs and rituals of my own future will be different too. The only certainty is that there will be progress, the future will be different, and that difference will be called progress whether in fact it is or isn’t. This form of society, with its far greater uncertainties, will insist on larger discount rates, certainly for things as expressed in financial terms, but also in terms of its youth. Consequently, this type of society delays its youths’ entry into adulthood into later and later dates, because the large discount rate dictates that these young people are not yet valuable enough to participate as adults.

I argue that we live in a society that discounts its youth beyond sense or reason and to the point where the society itself suffers.

The double-income affluent couples hire nannies to care for their children. While I am a huge proponent of women maintaining livelihoods that are all their own (if I did not I could not justify Ruby’s two days in daycare), I am not sure how much we consider children above ourselves anymore. I wonder how selfish I am for not putting Ruby ahead of myself at every juncture. I tell myself that my happiness and fulfillment make me a better mother, but am I still a child myself?

Now I am a progressive. I believe that society can become better, that change can be progress, that progress is the ultimate purpose of being. The pursuit of happiness is identical to the pursuit of progress. And I see that I just wrote that societies that are progressive, that expect the future to be different than the present, have large discount rates and may apply that large discount rate to its own children. My question is: do we apply the same discount rate we apply to things and ideas even to our children? I say no. If we set out to make progress for our children, then we may discount them. If we set out to make progress with our children, then we will value them as they are.

I want so much for myself, for my longevity. I want to live up to the ideal I have proposed for myself, and I want to be remembered. But at what cost? At whose cost? Or, could it be, at my most enlightened, for others’ profit?

If I take your child into my time and space, a time and space we call school, our ways have become one, we tread the same path, and must plan together. And if we would do this we would be truly accountable. But life intervenes and we look for shortcuts, ways to get there without following the path itself.

[While still married in Michigan] my boys and Falicia continued to have a tough time in school. The shrink said maybe they were smart and school was boring. I took them to a College Level Exam Placement (CLEP) exam. They tested at the junior level of college in English and science. We tried them in the university and that didn’t work. We tried them at home schooling and that didn’t work either. For spring break we sent them out to Aspen to go skiing. I went out shortly after to be with them and bring them home. Immediately, I got a handwritten note from Betsy: It was over.

So I just stayed in Aspen with the boys. It was spring break at the high school, new classes, new schedules, and they did fine without me. Maybe even better than fine. Mark and Patrick went to the Aspen public school. Because the new Aspen Community School (ACS) was in the physics center in Aspen I helped to start, I knew about ACS, their people and their progressive approach. Soon, Stuart and then Brie went there. The public school, Aspen or not, was no different than what I had just experienced. The Community School, on the other hand, woke me up to what could be, and I was captivated. And to this day, I’m still a captive of these ideas of progressive education and of the union between education and social justice.

The mind is the elementary unit of education just as the atom is the elementary unit of chemistry.

A proper school then offers a cafeteria of experiences that progressively exercise the different aspects of the mind, adding new capacity to the existing capacity. A fundamental belief is that no two minds are alike. Children, particularly, present us with a remarkably wide selection of minds-in-development. Their minds are incredibly diverse and our guiding principle demands that we “Celebrate diversity with a determined inclusion.” We must celebrate each mind as we receive it and understand the possibilities that it can become. We must include that mind in the experiences of the school; we must mold those experiences to the very shape of each of those minds. The cafeteria of experiences offered by the proper school must not exclude any dimension of any child’s mind.

The desired outcome is that each and every child’s mind grows to its maximum capacity in each and everyone of its multiple dimensions.

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