A Just Council letter on how we protect our children, those close to us and one another<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is something parents say quietly when they think the children cannot hear. It surfaces in the kitchen over the washing-up, in the car after the school run, in conversations with a partner at eleven at night, when the house has finally fallen silent. The sentence runs: \u201cI don\u2019t know what kind of world they will live in.\u201d<\/em> Sometimes it is spoken as concern, sometimes as resignation, but most often as a quiet question to which no one has ever given us an answer: are we doing enough?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This text is an attempt at an answer. Not a quick one. Not a political one. Not an ideological one. An attempt at an answer grounded in something that for two thousand years has formed the foundation of the civilisation from which we all spring \u2014 whether or not we consciously acknowledge it. Just Council, the manifesto I am trying to develop and which I share here, treats that heritage as its axis. Not as a religious matter. Not as a political matter. As a human matter \u2014 in the gravest, most difficult and most everyday sense of the word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The call with which we begin reads as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.\u201d<\/em> The Gospel of Matthew 16:24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not a quotation about piety. It is the most practical social instruction Europe has ever received. Three movements: to step out of oneself, to take up a burden, to follow something greater. Three movements without which there is no family, no hospital, no school, no neighbourhood, no community capable of surviving a crisis. Three movements that today\u2019s civilisation has forgotten, and which our children must learn from us \u2014 because they will not learn them from a screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Allow me to begin with what our children\u2019s day really looks like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A thirteen-year-old girl wakes in the morning and the first thing she sees is her phone \u2014 because she put it beside her pillow herself, and all night it has been gathering notifications. She opens her eyes into a world in which dozens of people already want something from her: friends from the class group chat, an algorithm suggesting videos, a friend who took offence yesterday, an influencer showing what the \u201cperfect morning\u201d looks like. Before she has even sat up in bed, her attention has already been priced, auctioned and sold \u2014 a dozen times or more. She does not know this. We adults do not always want to know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A sixteen-year-old boy in a maths lesson is not looking at the board. He is looking somewhere between the board and the window, at a point that does not exist. The teacher knows that look. He has already seen it today in three other pupils. It is the look of a child who is here in body but whose mind has long been elsewhere \u2014 swiping, scrolling, escaping. Not out of malice. Out of an exhaustion he cannot name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A twenty-year-old woman in her first year of medical school comes home from classes and cannot read the two hundred pages she was meant to read. Not because she is lazy. Because in recent years her capacity to sustain attention on continuous text has been systematically dismantled. Her brain, biologically the same one with which her mother read Tolstoy at the age of twenty, today cannot last twenty minutes without a stimulus. This is not her weakness. It is the neurobiological reality of a generation that grew up in an environment precisely engineered against sustained attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A ten-year-old boy says to his mum, \u201cDad is cross with me\u201d<\/em> \u2014 and what he means is that Dad spent the whole weekend on his phone. He did not shout. He did not punish. He simply did not look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each of these scenes seems small. Each of them is a path towards something more serious. And all of them together make up a landscape that our children did not choose, yet which is shaping them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this point Just Council says something that may sound harsh to many, but I want to say it clearly: let us not leave them alone in this<\/strong>. Not because they are weak. Because no generation in human history has had to grow up in an environment so precisely engineered against its mental health. Our parents did not have such problems with us \u2014 because the world was not selling us. No one systematically sold us either \u2014 because the platforms did not yet exist in their present form. Our children have been a commodity from birth. They do not yet know that they are a commodity. It is our duty to show them that they are someone far greater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To do so, we must first understand for ourselves what that self-denial<\/em> spoken of in this two-thousand-year-old call consists in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Contrary to first impressions, it is not about contempt for oneself. It is about something far harder: stepping down from the throne on which contemporary culture bids us sit every day. Every post we publish, every photograph we share, every angry comment beneath someone else\u2019s thought is a micro-act of coronation. We are constantly encouraged to be the protagonist of our own world. The algorithm knows no humility. It knows only clicks. And without humility, without that humble step back in which we make room for another human being, it is impossible to be a parent, impossible to be a doctor, impossible to be a teacher, impossible to be a neighbour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Self-denial in the practice of everyday life means something very prosaic, yet very difficult. It means putting down the phone when a child begins to speak \u2014 even if they are talking about something that seems trivial to us. Because a child who learns that their words do not matter will not tell us, at eighteen, that they are not coping mentally. They simply will not tell us. And we shall wonder why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It means hearing a colleague out to the end before we begin to reply. It means making room in a hospital corridor for a patient\u2019s family who are weeping, instead of hurrying past. It means chatting with a neighbour about nothing in particular, even though we have no time \u2014 because she has no one to talk to about nothing in particular today, and a person who talks to no one about nothing in particular loses the ability to talk about anything at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Self-denial is not an act of heroism. It is an act of a normality we have forgotten. And that is precisely why we must recall it \u2014 first of all to ourselves, and then to our children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second part of the call says: \u201ctake up his cross\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the tradition from which we spring, the cross is not a metaphor for difficulty. It is a concrete burden that someone chose to take up, though they might have declined. I want us to pause here, because this is the heart of what Just Council is trying to say to a world weary of declarations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The nurse who comes home after her shift and cannot fall asleep because she is thinking of the patient in bed five whose condition is deteriorating \u2014 she carries a cross. Not the symbolic one. The real one. The weight of another human being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The family doctor in a small town whom a patient rings in the evening because \u201cDoctor, I don\u2019t know who else to turn to\u201d<\/em> \u2014 and who picks up the phone instead of switching it off \u2014 carries a cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The paramedic who at three in the morning decides on the life of someone she will never see again, and has no one to talk to about it afterwards because she returns to an empty flat \u2014 carries a cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The teacher who stays behind after lessons with three children whose parents are divorcing, though it is not her duty, though no one will thank her for it, though tomorrow the same awaits her \u2014 carries a cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The oncologist who for the thousandth time tells a family that there is a month left, and returns to the consulting room where the next patient\u2019s notes are waiting \u2014 carries a cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The firefighter, the care worker in a residential care home, the hospital chaplain, the hospice volunteer, the child psychologist with a two-month waiting list \u2014 all of them carry a cross. Every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And \u2014 what is perhaps the most important thing to say in this text \u2014 the parent who, after twelve hours at work, sits down on a fifteen-year-old\u2019s bed, though longing for silence, and asks how was your day<\/em>, truly asks, truly listens, does not answer messages in the meantime \u2014 carries a cross<\/strong>. Perhaps the most important of all they will ever carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This cross will not appear on any social network. No one will like it. There are no points, prizes or recognition for it. And yet it is by these crosses \u2014 thousands of unnoticed acts of presence undertaken every day in Polish hospitals, schools, homes, neighbourhoods, parishes, foundations, support centres, surgeries and hospices \u2014 that the fabric of civilisation is sustained: a fabric that no technology will build, no reform will repair and no algorithm will replace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here Just Council says a simple thing: if we stop carrying these crosses, no reform will save us. If we carry them \u2014 no crisis will break us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here a word must be said about why being joined together<\/em>, rather than divided politically, is today a condition of our children\u2019s survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to say this very clearly and without beating about the bush. One of the greatest threats we shall leave to the generations that follow is a generation of adults that has learnt to define itself above all by whom it stands against<\/em>. That generation can no longer build a hospital in which doctors trust one another across divides. It cannot build a school in which teachers and parents are on the same side. It cannot build a housing estate on which one neighbour says good morning<\/em> to another regardless of what flag hangs from the balcony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our children are watching this. Every day. And they are learning that adulthood consists in a ceaseless struggle for position. That a neighbour is suspect until he proves he is \u201cone of us\u201d. That solidarity exists only within the camp, and that beyond the camp the enemy begins. This is a poisonous inheritance. Poisonous in the literal sense \u2014 increasing the risk of depression, social anxiety and lasting distrust of institutions and of those closest to us. We have this documented in the data, but in truth it is enough to look at our own children to see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just Council rejects this logic entirely \u2014 not out of naivety, but out of very sober calculation. In an ambulance, when someone is dying, politics ends. In the oncologist\u2019s consulting room, when a family is told there is a month left, politics ends. In the school psychologist\u2019s office, where a fourteen-year-old says for the first time that he has thought about it<\/em>, politics ends. In the hospice, where someone holds the hand of a woman who has little time left, politics ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this is the foundation<\/strong> \u2014 not an ornament, not sentiment. A civilisation that forgets there are moments in which politics ends loses the capacity to care for its own children. This is not a hypothesis. It is the history of Europe, which we remember far too well to be excused from learning from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our duty towards our children is therefore something that sounds simple but is not: to show them that it is possible to disagree and at the same time to be human towards one another<\/strong>. That one can vote differently and in the evening hold Grandma\u2019s hand together. That one can hold a different view on the economy and jointly organise a collection for a family after a fire. That one can differ fundamentally and at the same time know that, should either of us end up in the same hospital, the same doctor will perform the same procedure on both with the same care. That one can write sharp words to each other in public and, in private life, visit a sick acquaintance from the other side of the dispute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not neutrality. This is not lukewarmness. This is humanity. Our children deserve to see it \u2014 because without it they will not learn how to build a world. And if they do not learn it, no gross domestic product, no innovation ranking, no signed treaty will help them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Allow me now to descend from the level of a manifesto to the level of a practical guide<\/em> \u2014 because this text calls for it, and because Just Council was never meant to be an abstract philosophy. What I am about to say can be put into practice tomorrow morning. Without a budget. Without a reform. Without anyone\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us begin with the child. If you are parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, carers \u2014 the first thing you can do from tomorrow is to set aside one small window of time in the day in which there is no screen. Fifteen minutes. No more, if it is hard at first. It might be in the evening before bed. It might be over breakfast. It might be at school pick-up. This window is not for lecturing, for testing, for checking whether homework has been done. It is for being alongside<\/em>. For the child to see that there is someone who truly looks at them, with undivided attention, without subtext, without self-interest. Children do not need everything from us. They need to know that there is at least one person in the world for whom they matter more than any screen. If they learn this from you, then even in the worst crisis of their lives they will have a safe point to return to. This is not a platitude. It is the neurobiology of attachment, which builds a person resilient for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To healthcare professionals \u2014 doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, psychologists, physiotherapists, care assistants \u2014 Just Council says: build within your team a culture of safe speaking up<\/em>. This is the foundation of Just Culture, which is not a philosophy but an infrastructure of patient safety. The nurse who is afraid to say \u201cDoctor, I would just double-check that dose\u201d<\/em> is not afraid because she is insufficiently trained. She is afraid because the team has taught her that mistakes are punished rather than received as a lesson. A system in which no one reports errors is not a safe system \u2014 it is a system in which errors repeat themselves until they cost someone\u2019s life. Change begins with one ward manager who says: here, reporting is a virtue, not a professional risk<\/em>. With one head of department who, after an incident, asks how did this happen<\/em> before asking who is to blame<\/em>. This is not a great reform. It is a decision that can be taken today, at today\u2019s handover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the patient and their family: treat the health professional as a human being. Not as a machine, not as an enemy, not as someone who has something to prove to you. Ask calmly. Listen to the end. Give thanks specifically. It sounds like a platitude, but it is practical professional fuel on which run the people upon whom your life and the lives of your loved ones depend. A burnt-out doctor makes more mistakes than a tired doctor whom someone has simply thanked today. That is how the biology of attention and emotional recovery works. Your simple \u201cthank you, Doctor, for taking care of this\u201d<\/em> is a medical intervention \u2014 in the sense that it increases the next patient\u2019s chance of better care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To teachers, women and men alike: each week choose one pupil whom you usually do not notice \u2014 the quiet one, the invisible one, the well-behaved<\/em> one \u2014 and ask them one question. How are you?<\/em> And wait for the answer. Longer than is comfortable for you. The invisible child is often the child who will one day disappear at a very grave cost \u2014 the cost of their mental health, sometimes of their life. Your weekly presence, regular, unspectacular, informal, is often the only reason why they will not disappear. You have no idea how important you are \u2014 because the system does not show you. But you are. Just Council says this without hesitation: a teacher in a Polish school who regularly notices the invisible saves more lives than many an ambulance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To employers and team leaders: ask your team when they last had a day on which they felt their work mattered. The answer will show you what you are really doing with their lives. It does not require a wellbeing<\/em> programme. It does not require a budget. It requires only a readiness to hear things you do not want to hear \u2014 and to respond to them with something more than a presentation of quarterly targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the politician who happens to read this text \u2014 and I would like you to read it \u2014 one sentence worth pinning above your desk: there is no reform of the health system without a reform of trust<\/strong>. You can change the funding, the basket of guaranteed services, the hospital map, the pay scales, the pathways of workforce training \u2014 but if you do not rebuild trust between the people who make up this system, between patient and doctor, between ward and ward, between facility and regulator, between citizen and state \u2014 none of these reforms will work. Trust is not a soft subject. It is the hardest variable in the equation. Without it the best KPI becomes waste paper, and the wisest statute a text that people find their way around. This, too, is a sentence that Just Council hands to you above party banners. Regardless of which side of the political stage you stand on. The patient lying in a hospital bed will not ask for your party card. They will ask whether someone will come when they press the call bell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the young person who has read this far \u2014 I want to say something to you very directly, without being patronising. The world in which you are growing up really is harder than the one in which your parents grew up. That is not your fault. It is not proof of your weakness. It is a fact worth naming before we go further. But there is one thing no one can do for you: find someone older than yourself \u2014 the neighbour from the floor above, a grandfather, a lonely friend of the family, a patient in a hospice, the lady from the library \u2014 and start helping them regularly. Without payment, without any effect on your profile, without witnesses. Simply help. It will teach you more about your own worth than ten self-development courses, five courses of therapy and a hundred motivational videos put together. Because you will learn something that the algorithm will not tell you and does not want to tell you: you are needed<\/strong>. Truly, not symbolically. By someone who waits for you, because without you their day will be worse. Who asks after you when you do not come. That sense is a foundation of mental health that no app can replace. And \u2014 perhaps this is the most important thing \u2014 that older person whom you help will give you something your peers will not give you, something your parents will not give you: the perspective of the distance of years, in which your problems of today suddenly settle into their true proportions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To everyone, whatever their role \u2014 Just Council proposes one evening question worth asking oneself every day before sleep. Whose cross did I carry today?<\/em> If the answer is no one\u2019s<\/em> \u2014 do not over-dramatise. Tomorrow is a new day. But if the answer is no one\u2019s<\/em> for a whole week \u2014 it is a sign that something has begun to slip away from you. This indicator matters more than most you will find in health apps. Because it measures not the number of steps but the number of real presences. Not calories, but solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There remains the question with which this text began. What shall we leave our children?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We shall leave them a world with more tools and less trust. With better medicine and a weaker capacity for being together. With access to every piece of information and a deficit of wisdom. With greater knowledge and less presence. We shall leave them longer lives and shorter attention spans. Better technologies and poorer relationships. That is the real inventory, regardless of who wins the next election, regardless of what economic growth will be, regardless of whom we elect as president, prime minister or minister of health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there is also something we can leave them whole \u2014 the one thing over which the algorithm has no power, the one thing politics cannot destroy, the one thing history is unable to take from us. We can leave them an example<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The example of a person who denies himself when someone beside him is suffering. The example of a professional who treats their profession as a vocation, not as a contract. The example of a neighbour who knocks, though he could pretend he had not heard. The example of a parent who puts down the phone and truly looks. The example of a community in which no one dies alone, because there is always someone who remembers. The example of an adulthood that defines itself not by whom it stands against<\/em>, but by whom it protects<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This example does not arise from declarations. It does not arise from posts, manifestos, election programmes or corporate strategies. It arises from thousands of small acts of everyday presence that no one notices \u2014 and which our children see better than we do ourselves. Because children do not imitate what we say. They imitate what we do when we think no one is watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that is precisely why the third part of the call with which we began reads: \u201cfollow me\u201d<\/em>. It is not about a crowd following a banner. It is about a person who begins to walk \u2014 and leaves a track along which someone else can go. A track along which our children can go. A track which they, when grown, will leave for their own children. That is how a civilisation is built. Not by decree. By footsteps in the snow, one after another, enough times to make a path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we leave our children this track \u2014 the track of people who in hard times chose to carry another person\u2019s cross rather than spare themselves \u2014 we shall leave them everything they need. The rest \u2014 the system, technology, politics, the economy, regulation \u2014 will follow of itself. Because they will be a generation that knows what adulthood looks like. And a generation that knows what adulthood looks like will repair any system it inherits. A generation that does not know it will destroy the best of systems within two generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we return to that kitchen at eleven at night. To the quiet question a parent asks themselves when the children have finally gone quiet and their partner is watching something with the sound off in the next room. Are we doing enough?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Just Council answers: there is no such measure. There is no number of hours, no sum of money, no plan that would give you certainty. There will be no certainty. That is the price of being an adult and of being a parent. But there is one simple practice that is enough to let you sleep in peace. Tomorrow morning, try to deny yourself once more than today. To take up another person\u2019s cross once more than yesterday. To follow something greater than your own comfort, even if only for a minute.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That is all. Truly. That is the whole of the wisdom this two-thousand-year-old text carries \u2014 and which Just Council is trying to translate into the language of our times: the language of health systems, education, the family, the neighbourhood, public policy and everyday decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we live like this \u2014 together, united, regardless of divisions, regardless of generations, regardless of roles, regardless of opinions \u2014 we shall hand on to our children something no one will take from them. And, most importantly, they will themselves learn to pass it on. That is the only way in which civilisation has survived the last two thousand years. And it is the only way in which it will survive the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A cross we carry together is always lighter than one we would carry apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And a community that understands this will survive anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Just Council<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n