Comment: Reclaiming clarity

We shouldn’t, and can’t, judge them for their deeds. They’ll be doing that themselves for the rest of their lives.

By DAVID BRINN
vintage cars 370 (photo credit: courtesy)
vintage cars 370
(photo credit: courtesy)
We hear about yet another infant left to die in the back seat of a scorching automobile and we raise our hands and scream ‘Why!?’ The epidemic – and that’s what it is turning into, with three cases in the past two weeks – cannot be narrowed down to an indictment of a particular socioeconomic group, but rather a reflection on modern society as a whole.
Just as technology could be the answer, in the guise of a proposal by MK Orly Levy-Abecassis to require the installation of preventive devices in cars, it is also technology that has enabled us to function at a dangerous pace that is just not compatible with a healthy lifestyle.
With all the freedom that we’re afforded thanks to time-saving apps and lightning-fast communication devices, we’ve instead become enslaved to filling up that time to the extent that most of us are seriously overbooked, in our calendars and in our minds.
The result is that far too often, children – the most precious commodity that even technology can’t improve on – are being marginalized in our lives.
We’re encouraged to have lots of kids, but as anyone knows, maintaining a large family requires an unreasonable amount of time, energy and money. That means for parents, more and more time is devoted to their livelihoods in an effort to pay the mortgage, buy the food, and clothe and educate the family.
Have children become just another item on the to-do list for the day? Call the plumber, take money out of the ATM, drop Udi off at nursery school, and go to the gym, all while texting, tweeting and holding business conference calls.
Fathers were responsible for the last three tragedies – fathers who undoubtedly loved their babies more than anything else, but were so distracted by the clutter of life that they allowed the clarity of life to momentarily slip away.
Nobody can get into the head of a parent who forgets his baby in the backseat of a car.
But rest assured, it could happen to any of us.
We shouldn’t, and can’t, judge them for their deeds. They’ll be doing that themselves for the rest of their lives.
Instead, this spate of horror should serve as a wake-up call to scale down the multi-tasking, thin out the schedule, and take stock of what is really important.