Anyway, I have been learning a lot recently on being human. By that I mean learning to see beyond race and gender and the like and trying hard to understand other people's struggles. I am very new to learning about and understanding what many call the feminist movement. Learning that it's more about a battle to be seen as equals and treated as human beings and less about being angry at males. I have been opening my mind to new points of view on the struggles of minority races, social and economic classes and such. So, today is the 150th anniversary of the day one of my favorite Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, stood on the battlefield at Gettysburg and gave his short address, and this has compelled me for whatever reason to write my own interpretation of his words.
Seven score and one decade ago a hero to the people he served, Abraham Lincoln, brought forth to this nation, conceived in Liberty, a great reminder of the ideal, the truth in fact, that all people are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great media war, testing whether We the People will grow to be so dedicated to President Lincoln's plea that we force change -- we stand up and lead again. We are met on a great battle-field not in a literal sense, yet within our hearts and minds. That field, for those who choose, can be a final resting place for thoughts of racism, genderism, and the like. It is altogether fitting and proper that we abhor, and should abhor, any notion that our fellow men and women are in any way undeserving of our respect and of our love. We must resolve to balance truth and love and when truth needs to be shared it must be done in genuine love.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- the mind, the will, the heart of another. The brave men and women, some who gave their lives believing true principles of Freedom were paramount, who struggled to grow themselves, have consecrated within themselves, far above our poor power to add or detract, and yet we must do the same. We must begin with ourselves, learning to accept differences, love others, understand their struggles from their eyes. The world will little note, nor long remember what we type here, but it can never forget the victory when one person chooses great over good, significance over comfort, and the ripple ebbs and flows through generations.I have left the last two sentences of his address intact.
"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."
[Abraham Lincoln: November 19, 1863]
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