Dear friends in Tuena
By Anker Mikkelsen, Denmark
Thirty years ago I got a postcard from my friend Geoff Knight who lived, still lives and holds his dentist practice in Melbourne. The postcard showed him with a small crowd of friends celebrating the New Years Eve on a beach somewhere in Australia. As he wrote: “It was a nice cool summer evening”. Until now I did not understand how that could be. In Scandinavia we always expect summers to be nice and hot. The visit in your country last January taught me how an evening can be nice and cold. Now let me tell you, in Scandinavia we have had the most magnificent summer you can ever think of with days of more then 30 Celsius degrees for long periods.
This night is one of the hot nights where I am sweating not only because I have promised Eric to deliver tomorrow but because of the heat as well.
We live in a turbulent time in Europe. This year it is 60 years since our biggest generation was born. During the war we did have the baby boom – which they probably are expecting next year in The States – and now our children are about to take over the responsibility for our society. My generation is about to retire and we are expecting a long and adventurous retirement. The big question is: Have we been good enough to prepare the next generation for that responsibility. We did never get as many children as our parents did, we have not been successful in integrating the vast number of immigrants who has been knocking our doors seeking refuge during the past thirty years and only time can show if we have been good enough in educating the next generation to take over from us.
Well - our children are far better educated than we ever was, they are much better of in welfare and in most skills. What is needed is a deeply felt social understanding and the unquestioned belief in other people and accept of strangers as a friend you do not know yet.
The European Union is one step in the right direction but we still have to overcome the a lot of difficulties before we can make sure that the world will be as wished Martin Luther King exactly forty years ago- He said: I have a dream, I have a dream that my children will live in a world where they will be judged for their character and not for colour of their skin.
Hope this column will find everybody safe and in good health.
Yours
Anks