Think About it --Don’t Rue This Day or Our Country

I am overwhelmed with appreciation for our nation this weekend. The realization of what we are as America, cannot be understood until we’ve seen other nations and absorbed our own history.

I never liked school, except for history. Thankfully I didn’t have teachers trying to shape history (or me) into their belief systems. The teachers I had just presented history as it was.

Nor was the home I grew up in saturated with the political opinions of so many home cultures now. It seems the first question one needs to know now when being presented with a new friendship is, “are you conservative or liberal?” I regret that.

As security operators we should be mindful of the differing political opinions coming through our doors every week and check our personal egos and dogmas at the door.

I recently spoke with a man remiss that anyone would have children in today’s world. He emphasized that our nation has left nothing at all but pain and suffering for our future generations. He refused any hope response. Our conversation troubled me.

Then I got a message from an FBSN member that reminded me of our history.

Think about it

In a letter to his wife from Philadelphia in 1776, John Adams predicted what future Independence Days would be like. I’ve included excerpts only, with corrected spelling (there were good reasons why John Adams asked Thomas Jefferson to write the actual declaration). Adams wrote about the Day of Independence, that it,

“…will be the most memorable epochal, in the history of America.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.

… I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.”

Don’t rue this day or our country.