2 Year Old Courage

I’ve been a parent for a little more than 8 years. That’s not very long. However, cramming five kids (I call them “The Skinnies”) into those 8 years has forced my wife and me to maneuver our way through a very fast, very steep learning curve. One of the things I’m learning is that children can be surprisingly astute. Once in a while, one of The Skinnies will say something that stops me in my tracks and pulls me into an introspective look at myself and the way I’m living my life. Their untainted outlook on life is truly refreshing and it often produces profoundly simple words of wisdom. Last night my youngest son provided a classic example of this.

The kids were all in their jammies, teeth brushed, and I had just finished reading them a short Bible story on the floor of our family room. My son started to run down the hall into his bedroom intending to get his favorite toy tiger (pronounced “tie-goo”). When he realized that the hall was dark, and his bedroom was at the other end of all that darkness, he paused. He turned to me and following conversation ensued:

Son: “Daddy, are you scared of the dark?”
Me: “Nope. There’s nothing to be scared of in our house, dude”
Son: “Is my brother scared of the dark?”
Me: “Sometimes he is, yes.”
Son: “I’m scared of the dark, but when I get scared of it, I just go through it”
Me: “That’s really good, dude. You have a very brave heart!”
Son: “Yup”

When I’m scared, I just go through it. My wife and I just shared a smile and shook our heads. We agreed that we could both use a little bit of that kind of courage in our own hearts. What my son doesn’t know (thank God he can’t read yet!) is that I do get scared, fearful and anxious. Frankly, it happens more frequently than I’m allowed to show on the mannish façade I have to prop up every day. And the next time I’m faced with something I fear, I hope his words come to my mind. I hope I can face my fears as valiantly as he does, some day.

It's Only Lunch Time

She’s not here
So I ask the question
How much longer until I get to go home?
Emails
Phone Calls
Customers
The inbox is filling up
But I don’t really care what any of those silly CCing senders have to say
Not right now
Cause She’s not here
I’m focused on the clocks
On the wall
Two time zones tick by
Slowly
Simultaneously Stubborn
Stretching the day out in front of me on a treadmilling horizon
Making me
Ask the question
‘Cause She’s not here
There’s something about her presence
You want to get close
When she’s there
You want to stay close
When she’s here
But she’s not here
So I ask the question
I take a bite of the lunch she lovingly prepared
Early
Sleepy
While the other 5 needers slept, she served the oldest, fattest, meanest one
Just like every other yesterday
Before today
Then I left and came here
But only part of me
The inside part stayed there and the robot part drove here
33.6 miles away
One way
And so I ask the question
‘Cause she’s not here
All the little needy needers get to stay and see
Touch
And Be
Those shrimpy little bandits
She smiles and lets them take, seize, capture
The very same time I watch on my walls from here
Wanting to be there
And so I ask the question
‘Cause she’s not here
How much longer until I get to go home?
I guess I’ll go back
To inboxing
And spreadsheeting
Until the tick and the tock of my time has come
33.6 more miles
One Way
And she’ll be there

When in the Course of Human Events ...

Forget about fireworks and hot dogs... This is what it's all about. Thanks Grandpa.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good


• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.


• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.


• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.


• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.


• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.


• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.


• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.


• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.


• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.


• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.


• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.


• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
  
• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
  
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:


• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:


• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:


• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:


• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:


• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies


• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:


• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.


• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.


• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.


• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
  He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.


• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton