This coming Friday, we citizens of the USA will be celebrating Independence Day, the anniversary of the day, in 1776, that our Founders declared the people of the colonies to be free and self-governing states. In other words, it’s our birthday.
Some of us know the story of the holiday’s origin; increasing numbers of us, sadly, don’t. Nevertheless, we celebrate it loudly! We’re like that. It’s one heck of a great, big party.
It’s been my own custom since I was a young teen, to think about the freedom our Founders so soberly and courageously declared in their Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
There comes a time, they said, when men must say “Enough!” to tyrannical rule and to refuse to bow to it any longer. And their time had come.
The Constitution was signed eleven years after the Declaration of Independence and the ten amendments that composed the original Bill of Rights came four years after that. But for us, the heirs, the three documents seem a single piece and outline for us what the Founders meant by freedom.
Two hundred and forty-nine years have passed since our nation’s beginning, and, in the chaos of our current age, both the interpretation and the wisdom of our founding documents have come into question. As with almost all questions before us now, we are passionately divided in our opinions. Only time will tell how we shall sort it all out.
At any rate, with the holiday’s approach, I found myself thinking, once again, about freedom and about the question of inalienable rights, those that belong to us as human beings, and are absolute.
I’m not talking about the rights granted to us as citizens of a state, but about those we possess regardless of the government under which we find ourselves living. And of the three which the Declaration mentions, the one I find most significant is liberty, the right to choose who and how we will be.
It’s this one that’s assumed in the other rights our Founders enumerated. And while there will, perhaps, always be those who seek the power to limit our choices or to force us to conform to their wills, in the end, each of us has the power to say yes or to say no at every turn of the road.
Let me ask you then, how are you exercising your right to choose? How clear are you about what you genuinely want for yourself? About who and how you want to be?
What tyrant is holding you back? Are you allowing convenience or habit to stand in the way of your being the best that you can be? The happiest? The most fulfilled? Where are you compromising yourself? Are you placing blame on something or someone outside yourself for keeping you from being who you want to be?
If so, write your own Declaration of Independence, and then work toward shaping a new set of self-governing laws under which you vow to yourself to live, regardless of the cost or struggle, in the name of integrity and honor. You have, after all, the freedom to choose. And nothing can take that away.
Wishing you courage and a vision of wonderful possibilities.
Happy Birthday, America . . . and many more.
Warmly,
Susan