My only questions are: what will move you to take action? How will you be moved/stirred into action?
Last week, President Obama outlined his agenda to a joint session of Congress. He will tackle green jobs, health care, education, and will slash the budget deficit. I’ve spoken with a number of people who have watched the speech and I’ve heard mixed reviews. Some thought it was too broad, while others thought it was just right. Some said there weren’t enough specifics, while others reported feeling hopeful and inspired by rhetoric.
Whether you thought the speech was effective or not it doesn’t matter. Our new President has outlined a bold agenda for the next four years. I believe that by giving a speech – void of the minutiae – he appealed to our highest ideals. He was saying that we are on a journey for which there is no charted course. He was saying that while we may not know the territory, we do know the destination. Isn’t that what JFK did when he challenged America to land a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s? At the time he had no idea how we would get there, and in 1969 we landed a man on the moon.
Big dreams and high ideals make America great, and Obama’s speech left filled me with hope and optimism. I don’t quite know how we’ll get there, but I know that we will – somehow… someway.
Below you will find a word cloud for my favorite quotes page. I will be adding more in the coming days and would also love to add any quotes that you believe will forward the conversation.
Bobby Kennedy on the quality of youth:
“Our answer is the world’s hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress.
This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. It is a revolutionary world we live in, and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia, in Europe and in the United States, it is young people who must take the lead. Thus you, and your young compatriots everywhere, have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.”
Youth is a quality and a state of mind that gives us the ability to continually see the world through new eyes and different lenses. Bobby Kennedy spoke of the outworn dogmas and slogans of the previous generation and cited that what we need is the quality of youth. If we are to tackle the growing problems of tomorrow we need to go back to the visions of yesterday. We need to go back to a time when we saw the world differently: before we decided things are just the way they are.
When a newborn baby opens its eyes for the first time it sees a world without labels and identities. It sees a world through the eyes of infinite possibility. That is the quality that we need now, not just in our leaders but among the general populace. Kennedy said that in order to create the world that we all want to pass down to our children that we require the “qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.”
It’s time that we demand this quality of our leaders and of ourselves. I will now leave you with some questions to spur some creative thinking…
When you were a child how did you see the world?
How does the way that you saw the world as a child differ from the way you perceive the world now?
What is not possible now that you thought was possible when you were a child?
Who do you know that as an adult displays the ‘qualities of youth’ that Kennedy describes?
If you know a person like that, how do they personify these qualities?
Bobby Kennedy is an example of someone who displayed the qualities of youth. The video below is another speech that he gave called the Mindless Menace of Violence which highlights his thinking.
Talk about joining purposes and joint-action. Ted Kennedy has been a voice for those with none for more than 40 years in the US Senate. This is his speech at the DNC Convention. I listened to it on the radio driving to my girlfriend’s apartment. When I got inside I was so touched that all I could really say to her is that I just witnessed history. Senator Kennedy made it to the convention during treatment for a malignant brain tumor and most people said that he wouldn’t even be there. The reports were wrong and he even had the strength to deliver an 8 minute speech. Watch his speech below…
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