Finding Out What the Words Meant

250 years ago today some folks didn’t just jot down some words, they wrote something bold enough to get them killed, and then they signed it anyway.  It was not a plan, it was not a policy, it was a belief and they would spend the next 8 years of war finding out what those words really meant.  Or as Thomas Paine put it at the time, "these are times that try men’s souls."   Words like “All men are created equal”, “endowed with certain unalienable rights”, and “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  And right alongside them, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, and “right to alter or abolish”.  And they needed to explain why, “long train of abuses and usurpations”, and “design to reduce them under absolute despotism”.  And then, at the end when words weren’t enough, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”.

The Declaration of Independence is a hell of document, and I would encourage you to take the time to go and read it again, or for the first time if you never have.   It was a break from the status quo… a refusal to go back.  It was an absolute refusal to continue to accept the inherited systems, we were no longer willing to do things the way things had always been done.  A declaration, with a metaphorical exclamation point that power comes from the people, not the rulers.   The declaration did not build anything.  It simply said that we believe in something different about how power should work. 

And then we had to figure out how to live with it.  Because believing in something is one thing, but once the shooting stops and dust settles, belief does not actually run anything, let alone a country.  It does not resolve conflict, it doesn’t balance power, and it damn sure does not account for the fact that people are well, people.  And people come in good flavors, bad flavors and indifferent flavors.  

Belief can inspire folks, it can unify them around a cause and it can even win a war.  But belief cannot govern anything.  And John Adams understood that too, writing to Abigail after independence day was approved, "I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these states."  The ideas were inspiring.  Living with them will be expensive.

So, they were left with the much harder problem.  Not just defending the idea, but building something that could survive, something that was durable over time.  Something that could take all of that inspirational language about equality, rights and consent and turn it into a system of government that could hold together over time, under pressure and in the hands of imperfect people.  

And here’s the thing, that work did not end in 1787.  The Constitution was not the finish line.  The Constitution was really just the starting gun for a new argument about what those words in the Declaration actually meant.  Over the last 250 years we have debated them, tested them, expanded them, ignored them, defending them and on way more than on occasion, we have fallen short, well short, of the inspiration.  While the words remained the same, we the people were the variable, the wild card in this grand experiment we call a country.  Any old school engineer will tell ya the same thing, the system diagram is usually the easy part.  The unpredictable variable is almost always the human standing next to it.

Time is funny that way.  It has no interest in what sounds good on paper.  Give an idea enough years and enough real world pressure, and it eventually reveals itself, kind of like a diamond – time and pressure.   Every generation gets handed the same box of parts.  The names change, the technology changes, the fashions definitely change.  The questions, however, stay remarkably similar.  What does freedom mean?  Who gets included?  How much power is too much power?  What do we owe one another?  None of us get to skip those questions, not if we are serious about searching for that more perfect union.  We just inherit them, wrestle with them for a while and then hand them off to those in the next generation who they themselves are seeking that more perfect union. 

I’ve spent a lot of time this year pondering on the difference between understanding something and carrying that thing.  Some lessons come from books, some from teachers or mentors, and others that just show up, whether invited or not.  Losing my Beautiful Bride taught me that.  There are words I used my whole life, love, commitment, partnership, grief and loss.  I thought I understood those words.  Then one day I found myself carrying them instead of defining them.  It turns out there is a tremendous difference between understanding a thing intellectually and actually living it.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if that is what happened between the Declaration and the Constitution.  A group of folks wrote down the words they believed in, then spent years finding out those words actually come with a cost.  Not admiring them, not quoting them, not celebrating them on anniversaries.  Living into them, carrying them.  There is a gulch between simply believing in a thing and waking up every morning being responsible for it. 

One of the harder lessons from this year is realizing that some things are never really finished.  Grief isn’t.  Healing isn’t.  Learning how to live a life you didn’t plan for isn’t.  every day requires a little adjustment, a little recalibration, a little acceptance and a little hope.  The work doesn’t end because we wish it would.  We simply keep showing up and doing the next right thing, and then the next and repeat.  

It seems the American experiment works the same way.  The Declaration wasn’t finished in 1776.  The constitution wasn’t finished in 1787.  The project wasn’t finished after the civil war, the civil rights movement, or even today as we celebrate 250 years.  Each new generation inherits the work, leaves its fingerprints on it, makes a few repairs, and hopefully improves a few things on the journey on our way to that more perfect union.  The project was never the document, the project has always been us.  

250 years later, we’re still in that gap.  We still wrestle with questions about freedom, equality, fairness, opportunity and responsibility.  We have built an extraordinary country, but like the people who came before us, we are still trying to align our attitudes, systems and structures with our ideals.

And if I am being honest, this is the part of that experiment that worries me the most right now.  We have never lacked disagreement in our country.  In fact, disagreement was baked right into the system.  The founders have famously argued with each other constantly, how could we get those amazing founding documents without the tension of debate.  They debated, they compromised, they fought over ideas and occasionally drive each other crazy.  What they seemed to understand was that the person on the other side of the argument was still a key part of the grand experiment.  Lately it feels like we have lost a big chunk of that understanding.  We've become quicker to assume the worst, quicker to question motives, quicker to start with why we can’t instead of how we can.  And much slower to extend empathy to folks who simply see the world differently than we do.

Some days it almost seems against the rules to do that now, at least from my perspective.  It seems like we just talk past or around each other rather than simply listening to understand and speaking our truth responsibly.  We have divided ourselves into various teams, we have subdivided ourselves into groups based on any possible difference.  It seems like we may have forgotten that one of the earliest rallying cries from the American experiment wasn’t about winning an argument.  Above all else, it was about preserving the union, I seem to recall some words about that, united we stand, divided we fall, or something like that.

It feels like we have become very good at identifying what is wrong with everyone else and considerably less interested in examining ourselves.  The declaration speaks of equality, rights, consent and human dignity.  Those ideas require more than laws and institutions.  They require, above anything else, a willingness to see the humanity in one another, even when it feels the gap is too far, especially then.

We have built machines that can answer questions in seconds, we carry supercomputers in our pockets and can communicate with anyone on earth at the mash of a button on our device.  And yet somehow, we still struggle with the same human problems that a bunch of colonists wrestled with 250 years ago.  There are still days when it feels like we are drifting farther away from the simple ideals that formed the foundation of this whole thing.  We are in this together Y’all, that is the only way it works.  That does not mean we have to think alike.  That does not mean we have to vote alike.  We do not have to agree on every issue, that would scary anyway.  The thing it does mean is that we understand that we share ownership on this project.  Self- government only works when the people doing the governing believe that everyone deserves a spot at the table too.

So maybe on our 250^th Burfday, the question isn’t whether we know the words, most of us at least know some of them.  Maybe the better question is whether we are still committed to the dream that literally formed our great union.  Are we still committed to doing the dang thing that comes after the words.  Whether we are still willing to examine where we have succeeded, where we have failed, utterly and otherwise and where there is still work to do.  What parts of that original promise have we fulfilled?  What parts are we still building?  What parts are we tearing down or ignoring?   Truth be told, I am not sure how to answer all those questions.  Some days I think we’re closer than we’ve ever been.  Other days I wonder if we are drifting so slowly into the mirror universe so slowly, we don’t even see it happening. 

Maybe that is what’s been on my mind lately.  Not whether America is perfect, it’s not.  Not whether we’ve succeeded, we haven’t.  not whether we have failed, we haven’t.  The pressing question seems to be whether we are still willing to do difficult things together.  Because 250 years ago a group of folks bet an entire future on the idea, we should also be able to.  And I for one, believe we owe it to them to do our absolute fucking best to ensure the next 250 years are spent chasing that more perfect union.

So, let's go to the workbench and keep chiseling away at it.