I recently listened to this podcast series called “Hope Through History” by Jon Meacham. The series is well done. I believe we all could use some hope anytime, but especially right now. The series looks at different challenging times in our history and how we got through it. The first episode was my favorite and is about “FDR and The Great Depression”.
The episode ends with this excerpted quote from a draft of a speech Franklin D. Roosevelt was to give on the radio to the American people on April 13, 1945. He worked on this speech the morning of April 12th and died a few hours later. So although he never got to deliver this speech, it is essentially his last words to the American people.
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“Today, science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another.
Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace
[…]
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”
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What I love about this quote is that he felt like the world was small and close together 75 years ago. How much more true that is now, at a completely different level than I think he could have imagined?
He believed that the most important thing for civilization to survive was to cultivate human relationships. I agree.
Cultivate means to “acquire and develop.” For me, cultivating relationships means to make quality time for, to prioritize, to love (in action, words and deeds) those people around us. Start small. Begin with your friends and family and go from there. I loved his emphasis on the importance for all of us to focus on and prioritize our relationships, on our connections with the people around us.
We need each other and relationships make this life worth living.
For me the pandemic has made me focus more on my family and who I care about. It has shown the importance of community and how interconnected we all truly are.
What does cultivating relationships mean for you?
How can you cultivate the relationships in your life?
What specific actions or steps can you or I take to do this and enhance our lives and our community and our world?
Wishing you love and hope and inspiration.
Tara
P.S. I know that everyone has way too many emails and there is an overwhelming amount of news and information being thrown at us and is available to us every moment of every day. I want my emails and blog to be a source of hope, a ray of light, something to learn from or a reminder of ways you can make your life more of what you want it to be. If these emails do not do that for you, please unsubscribe. Your time is too precious and I wish you only the best.
If you enjoy these posts / emails and think others would too, please forward to them.
I am writing more these days because I have so many thoughts and new ideas that I want to share. I feel like I am learning a lot these days. I love the emails and the feedback I get from these articles and I have faith that they also help others think about things in a new or different way even if I don’t hear from you.
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