On Independence Day Eve

Let me spot you your fourscore—and go ahead take seven more if you wish. May you live that long and live well.

The national angst-o-meter seems to be clicking like a Geiger counter warning of impending doom, but I wonder. I wonder about the buzz that suggests somehow we might dial back to some moment in time before this juncture in our particular history.

So, using 1776 as a starting point, carve out your fourscore, a slice of when you would have rather been alive. With an answer to the ‘why’ of your choice of course. Heck, go on back to Jamestown. Go ahead, give me your notion of our country’s best stretch of 80 years.

And don’t think I won’t drop the ‘best for whom’ card on the table. But, go ahead.

While ruminating on that chore, chew on this—‘a more perfect union’ may not mean perfect as in perfect but more as in getting better. Perfectly? No, I would say ‘convulsively’ we move forward.

The 300-plus years that I am giving you not enough?  How about pretending to be from another country, another time. Turkey has been around since 900 or so.

Or Japan, 660. Or Bulgaria, 632. Or France, 486. Or San Marino, 301—had to look that one up, didn’t you?

Or going further back, Greece around 500 BC. Or Iran, 600 BC. Or China, 2000 BC. Or Ethiopia, 2500 BC. Or India, 3000 BC. Or Egypt, 3500 BC.

See what I did there? 

Find the ideal fourscore, somewhere, at any time—idyllic, just, prosperous…well, perfect.

As for me—and I can only speak for myself—if I should wake tomorrow morning in this here and this now, I can live with that. My threescore and a few, fully aware of work that is always to be done but looking forward. 

Ever forward.