Vow

 I was thinking this morning about how should one respond as their country spirals into a quagmire of forgotten promise and discarded beliefs.

When the boot prints of "safety" and "order" and "acquiescence" replace the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What can one person do?

Firstly, get with your family and decide as pragmatically as you can who you hope will be with you and who you know will be with you.

And then look at the history of rule breakers who demonstrated something else. They are always painted in history as "falling" into their opportunity, but I bet you dollars to donuts that they made a vow within themselves that they would find a way to subvert what was happening.

Harriet Tubman comes to mind, but what about the 100's or 1000's of candle lit windows that guided runaway slaves to freedom?

What about Schindler? I don't know much about his story other than what was detailed in the movie. He is another hero that is painted as having a flight of fancy which led to the rescue of over 1000 Jews who would have been on trains to termination camps.

The vow had to go something like this.

via GIPHY

But instead of vocalizing it, people like Tubman and the Underground rail road internalized it and put their conviction to work. With deeds, not words. And then I ran across this:

Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish children escape the Nazis. His efforts went unrecognized for 50 years. Then in 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he’d rescued, now adults.

I like to remember this every Jan 27th. pic.twitter.com/uq998DaRH6

— Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) January 27, 2023

It just solidfied the thought. 

These we're not accidents. These people made calculated decisions to do the right thing.

Now maybe things in your world never get bad. But vowing to do the right thing, doesn't start when things get bad. It starts the moment you think about your choices.

I encourage you to make the vow within your heart to do the right thing.