July 4th, 2020
A Life is composed of a number of years, a number of days, and a number of moments. Over the course of a lifetime, we tend to remember “moments”. If I asked you to remember your oldest memory, it would be the moment of an event, a birthday, a vacation, or tragically for many a life-altering trauma.
But we are afforded only one life, only so many moments. Our choice becomes how to learn to live in this moment, right now, today, with all our failures and foibles, or we can choose to live in those past moments.
One of the most wonderful things about life is that each day is an opportunity to start over. We can learn to live in this day, enjoy it, love in it, care for others in it
Today is the 244 Birthday of the United States of America. We are the most privileged people who ever lived. Do we have problems? Of course, many we have tolerated for too long and the current state of our social and cultural lives are in the process of change. Much of this should have been done on January 1, 1863, when President Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation. If not then, it should have been done in 1964 at the passage of the Civil Rights legislation. President Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address noted:
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Sadly, many are still waiting for that moment. Let this be our “moment” to remember – that on this day, this noble day of the birth of our nation, that we resolve to let this be the time when we made things right with our fellow man.
Let this be the day when we made things right with ourselves; when we made a decision to overcome adversity in our life; a day when we reached out for help to make the changes we know we have always needed to have the great life our great nation has afforded us.
Let today be your “moment.”
Dr. Fred