To Those Who Have Gone Before Us

“OUR PATRIOTIC DUTY”

by OPOVV, ©2014

(Feb. 21, 2014) — What, after all, do we owe our ancestors, besides our most precious commonality that we each possess: life? But what is life without Liberty, or at least the extent of Free Will to choose, at its most basic level, a partner in which to gauge our sanity in a world that listens not to our commands: “Halt Thee Tide! Plug yonder volcano top!”

Are we perplexed, or have we figured it out by now? Well, I’m here to tell you that one of us has figured it out, but after he told them the secret, they killed him. Why was that? I mean, if someone came up to me and said, “Hey, OPOVV, I’ve got it all figured out, want to hear about it?” I’m here to tell you that I’d take the day off to hear the story.

Basic Question Number One: What does it all mean? Why are we here? Why are we here and not, say, someplace else? Why do we have to be here? I like the “What’s in it for me?” one followed by the “When does it all start?”

Let’s make up a world. In our make-believe world, each of us has a larger-than-life statue made of ourselves displayed in some traffic circle or the centerpiece of a park. You, me, everyone. Well, yes, there are lots of parks and traffic circles. In our made-up world the earth is the size of Jupiter, okay? So everything will fit.

So we honor ourselves, but will others honor us? I mean, we drive to the store and just happen to drive by our very own statue and feel good about the whole thing, but what about the other drivers? Do they pay the proper homage to us? Seriously, now, I doubt it. I mean, at least we beep our horn, but they don’t. They beep their horn only when they go by their own statue.

Looking at it another way, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial wouldn’t mean anything if there weren’t people who could appreciate someone like ’ole Tom. Same with George Washington, or Honest Abe, and if ever there was an oxymoron, that’s it, isn’t it? I mean, Abe was a lawyer, wasn’t he?

So what’s the formula here? I think the statues of these great people are put there to honor us, to honor our ability to understand that greatness is achieved only by other people understanding the ability to achieve a desired goal that we all share. Sorry, statues to Socialists are eventually toppled, dragged down, spit upon.

Face it, most of us take the easy way out. Some of us have learned, however, that the expression “You can’t see it from my house” is just an excuse for sloth. My father taught me “Do it right the first time,” and that philosophy has served me well throughout my life.

I used to live in New Orleans, and that experience gave me a whole new outlook on life. I used to wonder why the border towns in Mexico hated us Gringos so much, but my time in the Big Easy taught me that if a person thinks he is exempt from the judgment of his neighbors, he behaves in the most uncouth and atrocious manner, and publicly intoxicated is but one symptom.

We each plow through life to the best of our ability, and our wakes determine what kind of person we are. When we were in the Terrible Twos, our individual wakes were indeed destructive, but were small; after all, we were only two years of age. As we grew older, our wakes became wider, deeper, longer. Some of us left destructive wakes, while others barely made a ripple. But each of us, no matter who we were or where we lived, or even when we lived, made a wake.

It is for us to honor those who have left us a land that honors such a document as the United States Constitution. It is for us to pay homage to the poor unlucky soldier who was blasted to smithereens before he even set foot on the continent of Europe on June 6, 1944, or mowed down by machine-gun fire as he attempt to cross the beach. It is for us to mourn the followers of Spartacus and to show respect for the men and women who put their lives on the line for the Constitution, for without the Constitution, there is no America.

As Americans, it is our Patriotic duty to honor those who have fought and died for the cause of Freedom, for to do any less would be do dishonor ourselves.

OPOVV