Let’s All Be Patriots

This week, we have seen people die in our country of a virus unheard of a month ago. People crazy hoarding and believing the end is near. Hiding behind locked doors and keeping “safe distances.” Freaking out because now we have to school our own children instead of handing them off to teachers who are in some ways, more parents than teachers. And you are scared, I get it. However, now is a time to believe in ourselves, as individuals and as a nation.

I’m reaching out with what I was taught. See, my dad died 14 years ago. He was a patriot. As a patriot, there were no political parties. To the end, he believed in us. When he passed, my brother noted there was no flag waving across the street, which raised without fail every day. That particular day, the fates had fixed the pole and no flag flew. Every year, he put out his flags, not because of a political agenda, but because he believe in more than himself.

Two hundred plus years ago, our nation was new, spanking new, bottom bared. It still is. People who lived here before the European invasion, people who believed in the dreams, people who were cast off from their own countries. They have come here, grew here, lived here in America.

We are all patriots. Innovators. Creators out of the dust to show what we can become. The world looks to us. All of us. Now is not the time for political issues. It really is not. Our elderly are scared. Our young are scared because something has changed and they do not know what it is, but they know their moms and dads are scared.

The elderly hold our memories. The knowledge of where we come from and what has happened before. Some of it is, by far, not pretty. We are not a Disneyland country. We have scraped and scrabbled. Our minorities and disenfranchised finally have voice. We are beginning to be a country.

What about our young? The reports show they are “safe.” Are they? Won’t they feel the loss and grief when a loved ones leaves this realm?

If we want to show what it means to be Americans, then be a patriot. Someone who overcomes the odds and begins to rise from that dust. To show new ways of doing business, of schooling our children and young adults. To stand up, not for just the elderly, but for the ones who come after. They are our legacy.

What is a legacy? All of us, in less than a hundred years, give or take, will leave. We will pass. What we leave behind will be what we did in the times of strife, what we taught our children at home, around the stove and kitchen table. We will leave behind the children. Let them have the skills to innovate and design a new future.

Not just to the people with the wealth, but the children drawing in the dirt with the sticks, those who have ideas, even fledgling and percolating thoughts on what to do. Once we pull our collective heads out of the sand, there will be new ways to work, learn, and live. Stand up and instead of hiding, come up with ideas on what we can do to help our villages, towns, cities, countries. We can do it. My dad had faith in us. I have faith in us.

Let’s all be patriots and begin in a new light. It’s time to learn and develop a new way. Just my little two cents.

Thank you for listening.