Listening to the Voice

If I could read one person's mind, whose would it be?

My own.

That is the honest answer; and it is more complicated than it sounds. I want to listen to THE VOICE that is my own. I want it to come in clearly and loudly, always. I want to be in touch with my own expectations and my own reality; I want to trust that expectation; and I want to grow steadily within that reality.

But here is the thing: there is a meaningful difference between THE VOICE and the loud, incessant clanging of pots and pans. The clanging is everywhere. It is entertainment; it is diversion; it is the pull of short-term pleasure. It is bright and immediate and almost impossible to ignore. THE VOICE, by contrast, is quieter; it is the 30,000-foot altitude viewpoint; it is the ability to make decisions from that elevated vantage point, with long-term goals in sight.

THE VOICE asks bigger questions. Who do you want to be? Who are you manifesting yourself to be? Are you becoming the person your ten-year-old self would look up to? Are you becoming the person your eighty-year-old self will look back on with genuine pride; the one who got himself into exactly the situation he is now enjoying? And these are not easy questions to sit with.

So I have been thinking about role models; not people, exactly, but documents. Three documents that I believe captured THE VOICE of a nation at a particular moment in history; three documents that expressed the zeitgeist of a people listening to their highest collective ideal.

The 14th Amendment. The Declaration of Independence. The 19th Amendment.

Start with the 14th. Abraham Lincoln carried the Civil War on his shoulders; he bore its weight with an earnestness that never seemed to waver, even through the most terrible years of the conflict. His guiding principle was clear: end slavery; the one issue that had driven a wedge between abolitionists demanding its dissolution and plantation owners in the South who believed it was economically necessary for the ongoing operations of their large agricultural lands. Lincoln made his position known: the Southern States could only be admitted back into the Union upon acceptance of the abolition of slavery through the 13th Amendment, and then upon the ratification of the 14th.

The 14th Amendment was adopted on the heels of the Civil War; it was a Reconstruction Amendment. It was highly contested; it ended up getting ratified.

Listen to what it actually says. "All persons ... are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." That is it. Race does not matter; religion does not matter; there are no additional tests. Born here, or naturalized here: you are a citizen. Full rights. It continues: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Nothing about race; nothing about religion. Citizens receive "life, liberty, or property, with due process of law" and "the equal protection of the laws." Simple; powerful; nation-changing. I find it hard to overstate how consequential those words are, even 150 years later.

The Declaration of Independence is perhaps even more familiar; and yet its words still produce something close to goosebumps. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." The document continues to describe the role of government as one charged with ensuring the "Safety and Happiness" of its citizens. Written approximately 250 years ago; still ringing true today. That is what it sounds like when a people listens to its voice; to its conscience.

But voices, even great ones, do not always get everything right on the first attempt. The 14th Amendment was, in fact, the first time the word "male" was introduced into the Constitution to explicitly designate gender; it is embedded in the clause ensuring "the right to vote at any election" to "any of the male inhabitants." The 14th was ratified in 1868. It took the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, to correct that; to ensure the right to vote was not denied "on account of sex." That correction took over fifty years. THE VOICE, even a national one, sometimes requires time; revision; and the courage of those who refuse to stop listening.

Three documents. Capturing the VOICE of the nation. That is the power of listening to your voice. May I have the power to listen to my own voice better.