To begin over again. (Day 77, Year 2)

My kids randomly had today off from school--giving us this stolen day to take a breath in the midst of a weekend of musical performances and sports. Of course, the best way to recover after intense things is not to stop completely (lest you risk injury!) but to keep moving, albeit at a reduced pace. 

In other words, we decided to forgo rest and head on a little adventure in Old City. 

Everytime I go to the Liberty Bell, something new strikes me. I remember going with my Nana as a kid. We'd take Patco and get those Susan B. Anthony coins as change, which would lead to long talks about women's suffage, becoming an agent of change and how annoying it was that the women had to depend on men to change their minds in order to get the right to vote. I repeated this exact conversation with Chloe today, who noticed an exhibit about the Women's Liberty Bell and immediately said how annoying it was that these changes even had to be made and that clearly women are equal. 

She makes me smile, that Chloe, with her discontent. She'll be a change maker someday, I have no doubt. 

I noticed a quote in the visitor's center from Thomas Paine's Common Sense: 

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." 

This is an old quote--from 1776-ish. And while Paine was advocating for a revolution--freedom from a monarchy--it is a quote that struck me as eternal. I thought of Chloe and her annoyance that the world wasn't as it should be--as God intended. I thought of myself and the trauma that courses through my veins and memories. I thought of Lily who everyday faces a future that is tinted by a past fighting a brain tumor. I thought of the Ukraine and how, now, every day, is filled with endless terror and bombs. 

And while all those things feel so permanent--broken worlds, trauma, sickness and war--the truth is those things are just temporary. We all have it in our power to begin our world's over again. Maybe it takes all of us; maybe it takes a few of us; maybe it takes us changing the hearts of our enemies. 

We all have the power to push restart--we can push and drive revolutions in our own lives. We can wake up in the morning and decide that everything in the past, is past. 

We can be change makers in our own spears--forget who the world thought we were yesterday and instead be who we want to begin as today. 

I don't know what this means for me, exactly. Well, I sort of do, maybe. There are things that leave me a little discontented in my life and things I'd like to start fresh--a clean slate, a new world and it's in my power to start over, again.