I often find tears running down my face watching what I consider one of the best programs on television. It’s been a Sunday Morning tradition for longer than I can remember. But more than a few tears ran down my face as I watched CBS Sunday Morning’s look back at a moment 50 years ago that capped off a tumultuous, tension-filled 1968. This one is worth a watch.
I was 7 years old when the Apollo 8 mission took off from Cape Canaveral four days before Christmas in 1968. I remember the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as if it were yesterday. And while I can recall many of the headline events from that year, I was too young to fully comprehend just how divided we were as a country.
This was a year of sorrow and suffering and of massive bloodshed. And then at the end of the year, we had this moment to do this magnificent thing. It was serendipity saying, ‘Humanity, you guys deserve a break, make the most of it.’
Jeffrey Kluger
In the years since, I’ve witnessed many changes, most of them for the positive. The arch of history over that time span has been bent toward peace, greater acceptance of people who look different than “we” do, who have different beliefs, who love differently.
This year has challenged my faith in the direction of that arch.
Instead of a positive, historic, perspective-shifting moment like the one memorialized in the iconic Earthrise photo from Apollo 8, this Christmas we are being gifted with a dysfunctional government that appears content to set us back 50 years. In some ways, I wish I were a child again and unaware of the significance of just how divided we are approaching Christmas 2018.
I’m not. And so I cried this morning. 2019 needs to be different.
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