My Inner Voice

In 1887, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh stated: The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations have always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.

The sand in the clock of our history continues to drain. When the sand empties, the clock will stop. The clock only requires someone to turn it over to begin anew. Civilizations? That is a completely different story. My perception of human life and civilizations tells me that we, you and me, only get one chance to do it right irrespective of our age, color, sexual orientation, monetary worth, political or religious values or beliefs. No matter what happens in the future yet to come, we will all remain in the middle of our own personal caravans.  Our past has gone on ahead and the future we seek is trailing swiftly behind. We continue to live in the present. What has happened and what will happen are simply parts of now. During our lives we pass the creation back down the lines of the caravan through our presence and our actions.

The United States of America in which I have lived my entire life is fighting for its very existence. The war is being fought both from within and without. I cannot accept and refuse to accept the passing of this great nation. How do I confront it? Do I speak rationally and sadly or do I speak forthrightly and with feeling? My inner voice, the voice of the rational mind, speaks quietly to me and asks me to speak quietly in kind. The other voice I hear, my sometimes irrational voice, speaks of personal anger, fear, mistrust and, yes, even rage.

The rational, pensive voice I listen to daily speaks using the words and emotions as they are used in Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I---

I took the one less traveled by.

and that has made all the difference.”

My irrational voice urges me to listen and act with passion. It speaks through the voice and tearful emotion of Marc Antony as he spoke to the masses following Caesar's assassination in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”. As Antony spoke in behalf of the fallen leader, he concluded his funeral soliloquy with:

“Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war!”

What course of action we have taken and what will remain of the United States of America after we are gone is what we wrought by our own hands. For our children and their children, the caravan will have moved on.  I hope for them we will have chosen wisely in our past.