Thanks to the past

Houston and the nation live in the debt of the generations that preceded us.

As we reflect on last week’s Thanksgiving Day and anticipate the holiday season, it is only appropriate to count our blessings. We’re thankful for friends and family. We’re thankful for Springer Dingers and Jason Verlander’s right arm. And, as we look out at a city trying to rebuild from Hurricane Harvey, we’re thankful for the generations that came before us.

Today we live off an inheritance of reservoirs, bayous, sewers and drainage that, without which, Houston would have drowned dozens of times over. It’s not a condition unique to our city. All across the nation, we stand atop a foundation built by those who knew they would never live long enough to see the project completed. Soldiers sacrificed for a U.S.-led global order and way of life. Leaders planned and paid for the infrastructure and investments that keep the economy churning. The United States continues to draw from a steadily dwindling estate that was deeded to us by the labor and foresight of generations past — roads and rails, colleges and universities.

These investments were made at times of unknown challenges and unprecedented optimism. In his age, President John F. Kennedy described it as a New Frontier:

“Beyond that frontier are the uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus,” Kennedy said. “It would be easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric.”

Now we live in a time where it feels like every moment remains saturated by some distraction, and the promise of immediate gratification obstructs long-term vision. What’s there to explore when you can’t see the horizon?

We’re stuck with a mindset of a static world. All of society must fight for a single slice of the globe — a zero-sum game where any one person’s gain must be a result of another’s loss.

Scouting the far side of space or inside humanity’s mind no longer garners the best and brightest among us. Instead, the greatest minds of a generation have been harnessed for the mission of maximizing clicks for digital ads.

Rather than calling us to face the great challenges of our age, our political leaders ask only that we aid in their own mission of self-enrichment and selfpromotion.

All of Houston should be thankful for our city’s legacy of leadership — a heritage endowed to each of us: the Johnson Space Center, the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, the Houston Ship Channel, the Texas Medical Center, the Theater District, the Museum District, Rice University and the University of Houston and Texas Southern University. Without decades spent planting the seeds of future success, Houston would be little more than a once-ambitious cotton town on the banks of the bayou.

Today we once again sit on the precipice of untold human discovery: artificial intelligence, robotization, renewable energy, power storage, an interconnectivity and instant communication not fathomed since the Tower of Babel.

Kennedy asked his fellow countrymen to serve as pioneers in exploring their new frontier. Today we live in their debt.

So when the next generation of Houston families sit around their Thanksgiving tables, we have to wonder: What will they be thankful for?