Now. Now. Now.

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be One.” – Marcus Aurelius.

Today is Juneteenth, a holiday that should be more widely observed and hopefully will be in the ensuing years.

While it doesn’t mark the date of Lincoln’s proclamation that freed the slaves, but rather commemorates the day that a last group of slaves (outside of Galveston, TX) heard that they had been freed months earlier, I found myself thinking about this epic scene from the movie Lincoln.

Amidst the din of his squabbling cabinet members, Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) slams his hand down on the table. “Now, now, now,” he says to them. Silence. Then he speaks, “We are stepped out on the world’s stage, the fate of human dignity is in our hands… See what is before you. See the here and now, that’s the hardest thing, the only thing that accounts.”

Now is the time to learn and reflect on what we can do better.

Now is the time to love. To will the good of the other.

Now is the time to take action. To make art. To make the kind of change we want to see in the world.

Now. Now. Now.