Seven has always kind of been my number. The favorite one from all the other numbers. I suppose a lot of it has to do with the fact that I am the seventh born child in our family. Out of the womb with the number seven stamped on my butt.
Sometimes, mom would even refer to me as such, when she was speaking to other people. “Yep, she’s our number seven.” They got me a little jersey.
Anyway, this is the seventh month now. The first day of the seventh month. So I have high expectations throughout July for it to live up to its number. And I have to tell you, historically, the first day comes packing a punch.
Some fast facts about that July First.
1776 — The first vote on the Declaration of Independence occurred.
1858 — Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace’s papers on evolution were jointly read to the Linnean Society.
1867 — The Dominion of Canada was formed, comprising the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario & Quebec. John A. Macdonald served as the first Prime Minister. (No relation to Old Macdonald.)
1905 — Albert Einstein introduced his theory of special relativity.
Those are four pretty significant events in the passing of world history, I’ll tell you.
I could list a lot of other happenings for this date, everything from the first black man being allowed in West Point Academy. (In 1873, Henry Ossian Flipper of Georgia entered the academy. He was both a soldier and a former slave.). Or what about Alexander II of Russia granting Jews the right to publish books in 1862? And in 1963, we got our ZIP codes for the first time. “ZIP” stands for “Zone Improvement Plan” and I guess since then we’ve had improved zones.
I bet plenty of fine people have been born on this date. Yes. It seems that July 1 is a big day on many levels.
I know personally, in 1967, it was the day I found out that Captain Kangaroo was not a real person. I had asked for a pet rabbit and sited Mr. Bunny Rabbit in my arguments. I was told that he was a puppet, and the old captain was a character.
I think that was also the day I decided to become a character.
But truly. When I reflect on days like today and see all the things that people have done in this world, throughout all of history, I sometimes wonder about ways to make a great contribution to humanity. Ways to make a difference. Especially these days, when every “feel good” news story tells us about someone giving cheeseburgers to emergency room workers, or some 100-year-old man walking a 100 laps in his garden to raise millions of dollars for people.
I went out in the backyard, fired up the grill, and did 56 laps up and down the driveway, and it didn’t have the same effect.
But, we can’t all be Einsteins or Darwins. I mean this in the truest way. It is okay for us to be where ever we are right now. In what we do. Even if we feel kindness, or goodwill, or compassion, for only one other sentient being. Just once in a day? That is a perfectly good place to start.
I think we are here to learn and to grow. Simply acknowledging that, and looking for the ways around us that we can appreciate ourselves, our world, and others. That is the beginning of our growth.
We can be where we are. At the same time, we can let in the possibility to expand, to become, to flourish. We can leave wide open the prospects of goodness. Of our hearts. In our moments, in our ways.
And that, my friends, is another significant event to mark down on our first days, of our seventh month. And the next, and the next.
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“My turn shall also come:
I sense the spreading of a wing.”
― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems
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“A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.”
― Paul Klee
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“My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”
― Marcel Proust
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