Today is July 4th and families across America are celebrating Independence Day. People are gathering together to eat, drink and watch fireworks. Through all the merry making it can be easy to forget that we are celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This, of course, was intended to release us from the tyranny of British rule. Our friends over the pond might find it a little insulting that we are still partying over beating the stuffing out of them 234 years ago. But they did deserve it, after all they were being a bit overbearing at the time and we did win it fair and square, well…unless of course you felt that crossing the Delaware and attacking them on Christmas Eve was in poor taste.
What is great about war is that it eventually ends, and when something ends something new can begin. In this case the USA was born and with it a grand experiment to build “a more perfect nation” was started. Like any creative process, lessons from past failures where incorporated and we made sure to include rules like: separation of church and state and balancing the power of the judicial, legislative and executive branches. It was to be a government that trusted the common person to govern themselves – genius.
Even more brilliant was the inclusion of values based language in justifying the action. These same words were the foundation the country needed to give it an identity and guide it into the future. I found the core values to be imbedded in the Declarations first and last lines. In the first line it says, ” We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” In the last line it says, ” And with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Truth, life, unalienable rights, liberty, happiness, divine providence, mutually pledge our scared honor, wow… powerful ideals, who would not want to be part of a society that holds these beliefs. No wonder so many came and still keep coming.
I could continue at length about each of these values but something else even more important caught my attention. Before researching the declaration I wrongly assumed that nearly all the information I would find would be about the USA. Instead I found the opposite. We were just one of over 140 countries that declared independence from a variety of states throughout history. For example, India celebrates its Independence from England on August 15th.
This got me thinking about the three stages of relationships, maybe you know them, they are: Dependence, Independence and Interdependence. If your not familiar with the concept, think of it this way, at birth children are totally dependent on their parents for just about everything. As they mature into their teenage years they started taking more risk and building their confidence. Then they begin to separate from us in a bid to become independent. As they became successful on their own, they recognize the benefits of community and voluntary rejoin the community as a sustainable member able to equally give and take from the community – this is called interdependent. This should not be confused with co-dependence which involves people who have not achieved sustainability and depend on each other for survival. This can be a trap that actually prevents people from maturing to Interdependence.
If these levels of relationships are true for humans, wouldn’t it also be true of nations? Countries are just lots of people gathered together, right? The USA matured it’s relationship with Briton from from dependence to interdependence. We have learned from this example and now the rest of the world can do the same as we work towards interdependence. I believe there is hope for the world, we just need to increase the numbers.
Here is one step towards interdependence… let’s challenge to the world to start by creating the first International Holiday called “One Day” – meaning that we are one…one human race living together on one planet. The holiday would encourage people to take the day to pay-it-forward to each other. I see it as a day of giving without expectation… A good day to kick off the holiday would be 11/11/11. … the perfect date for One Day. What do you think? Could it work? How would we get it to catch on. Where do we start?
If you like this, please pass it on to your friends and family. We need more feedback from a lot more people if we are going to start a world wide movement…
