Or a bit of both…
If you haven’t yet seen “The Darkest Hour,” put it on the ‘watch soon’ list.
My God, the pressure this one man was under!
I’ve written about Churchill before, his courage and his flaws.
But can anyone, anyone at all, imagine Britain without Churchill ready to step into the breech in the spring of 1940?
Could any other man have saved the British people?
Did any other man have the fierce resolve, the sheer force of will, to do what he did — what he, alone, did — when he was needed most?
And how badly must it have hurt to then be rejected by the very people he had helped save once he was no longer needed?
~
Our greatest leader was a bundle of contradictions and flaws too.
He was ungainly, with a thin, reedy speaking voice, the butt of jokes and sneers.
He knew personal loss: his mother, two sons. He battled depression. He sought solace and companionship in books.
He was not a cavalier man. He was not petty or vengeful.
My God, the pressure this one man was under!
And it’s difficult to believe he didn’t somehow know his life would be part of the price of saving our Union.
Could any other man have had the moral bearing, the irreproachable character, the determination to see the bloody task completed?
Could any other man have found the words to express the solemn grief and the humble forgiveness required but Lincoln?
~
Was it just luck that Britain had Churchill, that America had Lincoln, or was it their — and the world’s — destiny?
Was it accidental that Jefferson, Madison, Washington, all the Founding Fathers, were right there to give voice to a new system of governance?
Is it happenstance that you and I find ourselves living at this precise moment in time?
Is it a fluke that the daily decisions you’ve made in your life — not in public, but alone, when no one was watching — have led you where you are today, have created the character that defines you and illuminates you to everyone who hears your voice or sees your face?
Is it your time to stand up and do what is right rather than what’s expedient?
I am neither a Churchill nor a Lincoln. I haven’t the courage. I haven’t the confidence or the certainty.
But I do know this: You alone hear the call of what you are meant to be.
Are you ready?
Will you be ready when your call comes?
Is there anything more important you should be considering today?
~
The irony of life
is our greatest fear is to forget.
Yet it’s the only certain fate
that anything has ever met.
We know one day our earth
will find itself victim to time,
that nothing will be left
to tell of your story or mine.
And still through life we rush
scrabbling for something to remember.
Perish the thought that ash be ash
and not the memory of an ember.
~ Erin Hanson