VITAMINS FOR THE MIND by Ron Reynolds #3605 (Tuesday, July 29, 2014) A Presidential Question When Ronald Reagan gave his first inaugural address after having been elected president, he mentioned a young man who had given his life for his country in World War I. The young soldier had kept a diary, and inside he had written his commitment to fight for his country and for the things he believed in; his exact words were – “America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.” Reagan made his own remarks why the remarks of the young solder were still relevant; He said in his speech – “The crisis we are facing today…(requires) our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that, together, with God’s help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. After all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.” The president gave that speech and made that statement nearly thirty-five years ago, at a time when interest rates made borrowing money senseless and virtually self-destructive. Gasoline prices had made a quantum leap upward, and lines were forming at gas stations that stretched a mile or longer. Businesses were closing, unemployment had skyrocketed, and the national self-image was – both individually and collectively – was in the ditch. The Iranian government had taken control of the American Embassy in Tehran and had held its American occupants captive for 444 days. But Reagan remained optimistic; he was convinced that the best days of America were still in the future, and not behind us as many believed. And then the United States Hockey Team defeated the ‘invincible’ Russian team in the Winter Olympics and that spark lit a new fire. Is this mental vitamin meant to be a lesson in history? No, but it is meant to be a message of reassurance that nothing needs to remain beyond our grasp – either as a nation or as an individual. We can do more, we can have more, we can dream more, we can believe more, and if we’ll exercise our ability to change how we feel about things, we can change how we are and how we behave, and that can change how we live and what we have. We don’t have to remain how and where we are; we can choose to change; we can accept the fact that our current circumstances need not be an accurate indicator of either our value or of our destiny, except by our own deliberate choice. I realize the feelings of frustration we all feel at the manner in which our government and our elected ‘leaders’ are behaving; they are both inept and ineffective; but in the final analysis, a government is what it is because the people are what they are, and I say to you that the time has come for change, and if you want the health and the vitality of our government to change, then you must change and I must change and we must work harmoniously together to make bigger changes possible, and we can do that – because “We are Americans,” - and because we have the vehicle of AdvoCare and the opportunity it presents to each of us to make good change possible. The views expressed on this post are those of Ron Reynolds and do not necessarily reflect the views of AdvoCare.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 12:00:01 +0000
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