Here we are, the first day of what will be a long four day weekend for many people, so it is time for a reminder as we bask in our summer activities, our celebrations, parades and fireworks, that we are enjoying this weekend because some folks a couple hundred years ago got together and told the world they were free to choose.
Now, I am not just referring to those gentlemen who gathered in Philadelphia in 1776, as powerful as those men were. Before those delegates could gather to create what would become the litmus test for the planet in terms of how people could behave, there were others. I am thinking of the thousands of other people whose names we do not know who first stepped onto the skinny branches of freedom. We often think only of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, then went on to craft our Constitution, perhaps this weekend you will look around your group of friends and remember that the tidal wave of freedom began with folks just like these. They didn’t have huge plots of land or industries at their fingertips, they were working people who had had enough of being told what to believe, how to work and where to give their loyalty. These were the people who made it possible for the Jeffersons, Washington’s, Franklins and the like to do what they would do.
Those people were just like you and me. We are free to choose. Choose your path in life, free to choose your outlook on that path, free to choose your view of life. At the same time you are charged with accepting responsibility for those choices; it is a two sided coin. At every turn you are free to choose, and free to change. You too can rock the world.
