When President Kennedy visited NASA in 1962, he saw a janitor carrying a broom. He walked over and said, “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?” The janitor replied, “Well, Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
This holiday season, I’m thinking about America’s mission to reach the moon. I’m thinking about those working on that mission and their belief that their role, no matter how small, was important. It gave them purpose, focus, and the feeling of belonging to a great cause.
President Truman said, “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination, and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”
We Americans are fortunate. We have a national mission that began with the Declaration of Independence and the words, “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.”
American’s mission is an ideal that can never be easily or perfectly achieved and will never end. But it is a vision that can bring this country together. It gives us purpose, focus, and a unifying cause. That mission will never be achieved through fear. It will take imagination, courage and each of us doing the job at hand. Now, with wars waging, this is the America the world needs.
Thank you for believing ours is a nation of progress, a nation of problem solvers, a nation of high ideals. I count among my blessings this holiday season that I’m a citizen of a country that has set before us an important mission. I’m blessed to have you standing beside me.
