The Declaration of Independence – Pretty Radical Stuff

I’m thinking about July 4th. Our national holiday celebrated with picnics, store sales, sporting events, fireworks….fun, fun and more fun. It’s easy to forget what the day is really about. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t read the Declaration of Independence since junior high school. So I thought I would pull it up on Google and read it again. Wow – pretty radical stuff!

As mediators, we are engaged in declarations of independence of a more personal nature. But the force that propels individuals or a people to pull away from what they consider a “tyranny” that binds them remains the same in the human heart. The affirmation for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…these are not just words, but the very foundation upon which our country rests.

On July 4, 1776, 58 brave men put their very lives and livelihoods on the line to sign a document that charted a course so many of us take for granted. 

With great thanks to and in the spirit of our forefathers, I present the brilliant language at the beginning of this piece of parchment that set us free.

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.

I encourage you to take some time during this Independence Day weekend to read the rest of this remarkable document (Declaration of Independence), and reflect on the nature of taking such a bold and courageous stand. It’s one thing to imagine what our forefathers did 238 years after the fact. It feels almost ghost-like to us in the 21st century. But these were real men, at the top of their game, with great fortunes to lose if the insurrection did not go in their favor.

No matter what form of independence we take in life, there are costs and consequences, sacrifices and substances at stake. As long as we knowingly step into our choices consciously, willing to bear the effects of those choices,THAT can make all the difference in the way we shape our future, the course of the outcome, and more importantly, the maturity with which we take responsibility for our freedom.