A Personal Reflection on July 4th:
Every nation has moments it chooses to remember.
Some celebrate independence. Others remember liberation, unification, peace, or the end of conflict. Whatever the occasion, these moments invite us to reflect on what we have inherited, what unfinished work remains, and what some people are still fighting for even today.
As July 4th approaches in the USA, I find myself returning to a line from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in 1863:
“It is for us the living… to be dedicated here to the unfinished work…”
Those words have stayed with me for years.
Outside the United States, “America” is not a single country. It is North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean—a rich tapestry of peoples, histories, cultures, and communities. It is also the home of the many Indigenous peoples—often collectively referred to in the United States as Native Americans—whose histories on these continents long predate the arrival of Europeans.
That broader perspective has always mattered to me.
Perhaps, as someone who has lived half his life in the USA and half abroad, that’s why I’ve never thought of Lincoln’s “unfinished work” as belonging only to the United States.
I think it belongs to all of us—and to every generation.
Every generation inherits communities it did not build, knowledge it did not discover, traditions it did not begin, and challenges it did not create. We also inherit the responsibility to decide what deserves to be preserved, what needs to be questioned, and what should be improved for those who come after us.
For me, that is one of the enduring lessons of humanism.
None of us completes the work alone. We build understanding together. We build communities together. We gradually enlarge the circle of dignity, compassion, dialogue, and mutual responsibility. It’s not always easy, but that IS our task.
Perhaps that is what Lincoln’s “unfinished work” ultimately reminds us of.
Not simply the work of one community or nation, but the work of becoming more fully human.
Whether you celebrate independence this week, another time of year, or not at all, that seems to me a reflection worth carrying with us—and something worth celebrating.
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Loitering Words 