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to keep the flame (soliloquy)
"To Keep the Flame”
How do we bear the weight of a promise made before we were born?
I have not stood in Philadelphia. I was not there when ink made thunder,
when men, flawed but fearless, lit a beacon in language and set it loose upon the world.
But I have inherited their gamble.
Now I walk through cities drunk on distraction,
where patriotism is a flag in the front yard and a doubt in the heart.
And I ask: are we caretakers or vandals of the creed we claim to love?
Give me liberty or give me spectacle— we’ve grown so good at choosing the second.
But I still believe that an idea, once spoken in truth, doesn’t die.
It lingers in quiet acts: a student questioning the status quo,
a neighbour breaking bread across difference,
a voice insisting that equality cannot be decorative.
The Fourth of July is not a birth certificate;
it is a daily challenge. A dare to live not just in freedom,
but in fairness. Not with pride alone, but with purpose.
Let us not be the generation that admired the flame but failed to tend the fire.
Let us make of our inheritance not a museum, but a movement.
And so— let this not be the twilight of conviction, but the dawn of its rekindling.
If history is a torch, we do not pass it forward by lifting it high only when convenient,
but by keeping it lit when winds rise.
Let it scorch our indifference. Let it warm our courage.
Let it blind every eye grown too comfortable in the dark.
We did not choose this legacy, but we choose what it becomes.
And if ever a nation was made by words, then let us speak them now—
not as echoes, but as oath. Not as tribute, but as promise made anew:
the promise to keep the flame—and carry it forward.
