I suppose it was inevitable, but this week I began worrying about Zoe.

I should explain. My wife and I are expecting our first child. We found out this week that our firstborn will be a girl. Zoe Michelle Giusti is due to be born the first week of August.

But when we learned her sex, I got more than an opportunity to give her a name. I also gained the curse of clarity and perspective. I now look at my city, my nation and my world, and I find myself wondering what kind of a world Zoe will inherit.

One thing I can be sure of is that this concern is as old as humanity. I know, as I gaze into my wife’s eyes and see in them the promise of my new daughter, I am cursed with the same concerns, the same worries and the same burden that cursed fathers-to-be 4,000 years ago.

So now as I look out into the world, I see the things I hope my daughter won’t have to deal with. I see the things I hope our society can overcome. I see the things I want to improve so my daughter inherits a world I am proud to give.

WARAlthough it may be as old as society itself, and I know that I have just as much a chance of eliminating war as I do evil, I sincerely hope this unfortunate situation we find ourselves in will not be a burden laid at my daughter’s feet.

I hope that, as a nation, we can rise up and realize killing in the name of an ideology is evil, whether that ideology was spawned in a terrorist’s den or a politician’s mansion. I hope we address terrorism through a muscular foreign policy, but at the same time resist the urge to drag innocent civilians into the combat.

I hope we can bring to justice anyone who aims to do harm to the innocent and that we do so through humane and efficient means.

And I hope that if Zoe ever sees a war in her lifetime, it will be one of absolute necessity, fought because there was no other option and because all other choices had been exhausted.

POVERTYPoverty is perhaps a problem too big to eliminate in time for my Zoe, but it is one we should take seriously.

Poverty is no longer a question of having limited resources. We are producing more now, and doing more with what we produce, than at any point in human history. And yet, entire classes of impoverished people suffer, not only in the third world, but also here in the United States.

I don’t know how to eliminate poverty, but I do know its elimination should be a primary goal of anyone with a conscience. It pains me to see family and friends work hard, dedicate themselves to success and yet still struggle to pay their bills.

I hope Zoe comes of age in a nation that lives up to its myth. I hope she finds a nation where if you want work, you can find it. I hope she finds a nation where if you work hard, you can pay your bills and are not asked to hold down multiple jobs just to keep from falling behind.

I hope she never sees the world that asks people to choose between dignity and survival, where an illness leaves you abandoned by society or where a single questionable choice condemns you to a lifetime of struggle.

EQUALITYWith any luck, Zoe will ask me one day why people used to discriminate against each other based on petty differences.

I will tell her there was once a time when people failed to look beyond the way a person looks. I will tell her it is important to learn about how cruel people used to be, so we aren’t foolish enough to repeat ourselves.

I will tell her everyone is equal, and everyone should get the same opportunities regardless of who their parents were, whom they love, what they look like, whom they worship or where they were born. I will say that, and she will look at me as if I was silly and say, “Well, of course. Who doesn’t know that, Daddy?”

Michael Giusti is the Student Media Adviser and an instructor in the School of Mass Communication.