Sarah and I were walking across the lovely pedestrian bridge over the river Thames in London. We had just finished the transatlantic flight and needed to stay awake and keep jetlag at bay for a bit while trying to adjust to the time zone. We decided to walk to dinner after sitting over the many hours of transportation from Idaho. Just outside of our hotel was this terrific opportunity to see St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower Bridge and many other sites just from a dinner time stroll.
As we reached the center of the bridge, I stopped and leaned on the railing to simply marvel at some of the things I had never seen before. While looking at the Tower Bridge, a rising tide of voices began to celebrate in perfect timing. The rousing voices came from both banks of the river and were obviously celebrating something significant. We then realized that England had just won a World Cup Game against Congo in Atlanta, GA.
The roar of the crowd was emanating from apartments, houses, restaurants, cars and especially the street side pubs where the crowds were spilling out of the doors. It became clear very quickly that all of England had stopped doing virtually everything … except watching the soccer match.
All of England was focused on one single and solitary thing, a soccer match! The lesson here for me was not to learn to love and follow soccer. It was not to go spend more time in a pub watching sports with the people who shared a passion. The lesson for me was far more basic and simpler, unity comes with shared interest. I had seldom ever heard such celebration across such a large geography.
It makes me wonder what it will take to unify our own country. Do we value our liberty enough to stand up for something. What if we are required to stand against something? While England may have been united over this sporting event, they are certainly divided over much. Let’s come together over an American ideal like the majority that we are. Perhaps start with something easy like the right to free speech, while we still have it!
Yeah, we should just start with free speech!
