Celebrating the freedom to be kind
- Bruce Stambaugh: The Rural View
- July 3, 2018
- 1319
Long ago someone once tried to trick me with a skewed question. “Do the English celebrate the Fourth of July?” was the query.
My answer went something like this: “Well, the English have a July Fourth like the rest of the world, but I doubt that they celebrate it.”
The Fourth of July is Independence Day in the United States. It’s a day of traditions: family gatherings, picnics with hot dogs and hamburgers, baseball games, and fireworks, although the latter is often spread out over a period of days, depending on planned community events.
American flags are flown, and many decorate their houses with red, white and blue buntings. Some communities hold parades with high school bands, fire trucks, decorated floats and troupes of children riding patriotic-adorned bicycles.
In typical American fashion, fireworks on the Fourth of July began in 1777 during the Revolutionary War with England. They weren’t the only flashes and booms in the sky then. Muskets and canons also were fired as ways to increase the commotion and hopefully boost the morale of the rebelling colonists.
A few years later during the War of 1812, Baltimore, Maryland had a life-or-death situation louder and fiercer than any fireworks. On Sept. 13, 1814, the British Navy opened fire on Fort McHenry, the primary protective garrison of the city’s harbor. Much like today, Baltimore was an essential Atlantic coast port. Its defense was vital against the British, who had just burned the nation’s capital: Washington, D.C.
The fort withstood a horrific 27-hour bombardment by the British fleet. Francis Scott Key, a noted attorney, witnessed the attack from a ship in the harbor. When the smoke and mist cleared in the morning, Key saw the stars and stripes still flying from the fort and was moved to write a poem about the battle. That poem became the lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” our national anthem.
My wife and I recently visited the fort with a friend. As I watched a replica of the original flag flap in the morning breeze, I thought about the importance of celebrating the Fourth of July. It’s much more vital than food, fun and colorful pyrotechnic displays.
In these current, trying times when everyone seems to be talking and fewer people listening, I recoiled at the unnecessary squabbles going on in families, private and public meetings, and the media and social media. Much of it is not pretty, and too much of it is hurtful, divisive and driven by fear, not fact.
A person I recently met gave this suggestion: Treat people kindly in the moment. It might be the only time you have with them. She was right.
This Fourth of July, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we began listening to one another without bias, without interruption, without labeling, without being dismissive or rude or worse? After all we are one nation, made up of many peoples from many different origins, languages, races, religions, beliefs and backgrounds. That is as the Founding Fathers envisioned in the words of the U.S. Constitution.
So let’s carry on with the usual Independence Day activities. As we join together with family, friends, neighbors and even strangers, let’s begin again to converse with one another with civility, kindness, respect and appreciation, whether we agree or disagree with what is said.
That’s how a community as small as a family and as large as a nation should behave in order to thrive. In accomplishing that, we really will have something to celebrate on the Fourth of July besides Independence Day.
To read more The Rural View, visit Bruce Stambaugh at www.thebargainhunter.com.