Did you know that the Statue of Liberty gets hit by lightning bolts 600 times a year, and that the torch sways 5 inches side to side.

That doesn’t happen to us. Or does it? How many times a year, or a week even, do we feel like we are getting hit by something, at work or at home, that’s knocking us more than 5 inches off our mark.

Here in the US, we struggle on so many fronts—justice, education, election, immigration, infrastructure, prison, jobs, housing, climate—and there is no telling when we will get hit, as individuals or as a nation, with a major destabilizing crisis on any one of these fronts.

We struggle with each other on the best ways to approach any or all of it, based on our core values as individuals. Then we struggle as the groups we clump ourselves into, where we are not 100% alike, but enough so to pit ourselves against the others who are not.

Do we think that conflicting core values will ever disappear? Probably not.

Do we think people will continue to clump together with those they think are more like them? Probably so.

The more things change the more they stay the same in these ways. I’m guessing yes.

But Lady Liberty is still standing and as a nation so are we—thanks to our military men and women who spend their lives and have given their lives to keeping us safe—while we struggle within and between ourselves to figure it all out.

And…so we could enjoy ourselves and each other in whatever way possible this 2021 Memorial Day Weekend. Bless their hearts a million times.

Warmest holiday wishes to all,

Madelaine

Photo by Florian Cordillot on Unsplash