After the greatest battle of the Civil War, the Battle at Gettysburg, where the most casualties of the war occurred, the President Abraham Lincoln gave a short speech. It was very short, barely three paragraphs long, and wasn't intended to be especially important as it wasn't even the keynote speaker. But it is one of the most memorable speeches given in all history. As the assembly stood on the ground that day, Lincoln stood and spoke, "Fourscore and seven years ago..," words that prefaced a speech of liberty and "a new birth of freedom", a freedom for all.
This short address speaks clearly to me, though I do not live in the age of slavery or a great civil war, and although I've never been to the hallowed ground on which he stood and spoke of, I am impacted by it in my own way.
"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."
The world will not remember the words I say. It will most likely not even know I spoke at all. But what I do, how I treat people, the choices I make, will never be forgotten. I will impact someone, I will do something, I will become somebody that will not soon fade from the minds of those who know of it.
The world will never forget what I do here.
