A Monday Morning Not Spent In Paradise

The Gettysburg Address is the most famous speech of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and one of the most quoted speeches in United States history. It was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863. It began:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

271 words. Simple and plain words that have been remembered for 145 years and memorized by uncounted people.

Words can be tremendously powerful - they can inspire men and women to seemingly super-human efforts, witness those that recently plied sand bag after sand bag on the levees in the Midwest, the words that drove them were probably very simple, words like "please help" and "next time it could be your home at stake".

Or words can destroy in an instant, what has taken years of sweat and tears to build.

The few words in Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address made an impact on our world all out of proportion of their number.

Honest Abe - obviously, was quite capable of expressing himself.

He knew very well the power of the written and spoken word. In the crisis of the American Civil war, he was constantly frustrated and infuriated by others - others that didn't do what they said, or didn't do what they were ordered to do, or simply by others that despised him for being who he appeared to be and not for what he truly was.

Abraham Lincoln wrote many letters, in the heat of the moment, saying awful things that expressed his frustrations and fury. Before those letters found their way into the hands of the mailman - and later into the hands to whom they addressed, Abraham Lincoln would tuck them in his pocket, and carry the letter around for a day or two...and when the heat of the moment passed - he would take it out of his pocket, chuckle to himself over what he had wrote, and tear them up and throw them away.

Something I'm going to think about.

I've been chatting with people for more years than I care to count. I've seen people come and go - some leaving in frustration and some in fury and some just leave without a word.

I've said some unfortunate things in the past - and have suffered badly the consequences. I've tried to overcome the bitter feelings I've caused, both inside of me, and in others. It's a work in progress though and each day, if I am lucky, I can chip away a small portion of the hurt I caused - maybe in time, I will restore what was - but if not, I need for my own sake, to know that I tried - there is no magic wand that restores trust and none that unsays words already spoken.

After causing trouble and hard feelings, I've learned to try to not say what I couldn't follow up on - and eventually have reached a place where I say very little of real substance at all - its hard to be "friends" when you are this way though.

I've seen entire chat places come and go. I've seen how their owners sweat and toil in an effort to bring people to their places - and I've seen them self-destruct in minutes.

Words - I think the old adage "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is...so very wrong. I suppose that what is meant is that somehow we are to "not let words ever hurt us" by ignoring them or something. I don't know, it takes a special kind of person to do that, and I know some people that can, but I'm not one of them for all my trying to be.

I need to get some work done this morning - but I know I will repeatedly return to this - and mull it over some more.