life liberty and the pursuit of happiness

We celebrate where we see liberty and freedom in our lives. In that experience, we look outwardly at our physical existence and judge it. Yet here we are – each of us conscious, thinking human beings experiencing this thing called “Life”. Certainly this Creator has “created” things we may never understand. Certainly this Creator allowed the development of consciousness within humans so that we could be aware that we have “Life”, so that we could experience “Liberty” and set off on the mysterious and magical “Pursuit of Happiness”.

Certainly this Creator embedded an intelligence within all aspects of the world. Certainly this Creator set the physical world and its evolutionary processes in play. To me, the biggest idea of a Creator is so big that it extends beyond my limited comprehension. What is the biggest idea of a Creator? Is our biggest idea someone who looks human, sits separate from us and judges us upon our death? Is our biggest idea to deny that there is any Creator? I don’t know about you, but both of these ideas seem rather limiting. When we discuss our Rights, we are moving beyond any limited sense of how they play out in our individual lives and into the realm of considering our collective Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. The “Creator” is the biggest idea we can imagine and attach to that word. We are talking about Men in the collective sense. Yet in many circles, capitalizing such words implies that they stand for the use of the word in its broadest, most inclusive, macrocosmic meaning. Why did they do that? Simply to emphasize the words? That’s what many believe, and in many reprints of the document, we frequently see it “corrected” by the removal of the capitalization. Here are just a few thoughts of mine on the questions – First, I find it interesting that our forefathers opted to capitalize certain words in that statement – Truths, Men, Creator, Rights, Life, Liberty, Pursuit, Happiness. To these questions as there are people considering them. What do we mean by the fact that “all Men are created equal”? Who is this “Creator”? What are these “Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” that we hold so dear? There are probably as many answers Outwardly, we acknowledge the efforts of our forefathers when they proclaimed their independence by saying “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.” Inwardly, we sense that there is some greater truth in that statement.Īlthough these truths may be self-evident, we continue to consider them and debate them over 200 years later. Historically, we celebrate our independence from Great Britain.

Today in the United States is Independence Day.

Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness