This past Saturday, July 1, my elderly neighbor offered me a flag. It seemed he had at least two too many flags. I have no doubt he thought he was offering me a great gift, and would have expected to see the flag flying from the notch on my porch today, July 4.
I said no thanks. When he looked sad, and expressed surprise, I said that appreciated the thought. But I really didn't want the flag.
If I had accepted the flag, I would have flown it upside down. Our country is in distress. The grand Declaration we claim to celebrate this day has largely been forgotten. The Constitution is largely a fiction we claim to uphold while various governmental agencies chip away at its foundations.
I knew if I flew the flag upside down, I would have offended everyone in my neighborhood, especially the person who had given it to me. Perhaps I place to much value in laying low or not offending others. But in this instance, it was clear the gift carried certain strings: "If you accept this, you will display it as I would. And if you display it as I do, then you must believe as I believe."
I was not willing to make that bargain. It was more honest to say no as politely as possible. It was not necessary to detail why I declined his charity.
Those documents, the Declaration and the Constitution, avow radical ideals. In writing the Constitution, the Framers hoped to provide a practical framework that would make the ideals expressed in the Declaration possible. We've often fallen short of those ideals. As fallible human beings, it is almost impossible to achieve those ideals.
But we must strive for those ideals, nevertheless. We must never give up on those ideals. We always try to think of ways humans are somehow "superior" to animals. I suggest this as foundational difference between humans and the remainder of the animal kingdom: humans have the capacity to change. Humans have the capacity to strive to be better than the previous generation, or even better than their current state.
Once we give up those ideals, we become an average animal. The same is true if we trade our ideals, a bit at a time, for the porridge of comfort and security.
"All [people] are created equal." As Huitzil points out, the people who wrote that document were thinking of men, and only men who owned property at that. We may think we have progressed since then, but it's so easy to think we are better than someone else. It's so easy to believe we among the forces of good and they are among the axis of evil.
Questing Parson expresses those ideals as a form of prayer. It is a prayer I commend to all other idealists.
So, how have I spent my day off?
I declared it a day of liberation. A personal day of independence. It may seem odd, but I declared this to be a day to liberate myself from my darkness. Or laziness.
I cleaned house. This may seem a small thing, but I am both lazy and a slob. So, thoroughly vacuuming the house is a major project.
Somehow the dirt I've allowed to accumulate in the house had a connection with an inner ennui. It related, somehow, to feeling increasingly oppressed by my worst instincts.
So I declared my independence from those instincts. I cleaned house. I tidied up. I washed clothes.
I didn't think about politics or the chimp in chief at all.
I may have little control over national politics, but I can affect the politics of my own heart, and the hearth that I sit beside.
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