We need not reinvent the wheel; we need to reinvent ourselves. I firmly believe man has the brilliance to solve each and every one of the many pressing, immediate, and significant challenges that are ahead.

 Unless we see these as self-imperatives and collectively take responsibility for our actions, they will be left up to a small band of others to solve. I doubt the solution will come from them alone. Feel no guilt for being part of the problem, but feel responsible and inspired to be part of a solution. A few great men and women may start out being the power of one, but no single great man, no single great woman, from the start of history or into the future, will make a change without collective will.

We need collective will, collective effort, and collective vision, for our collective future. You and yours. Me and mine. Them and theirs.

But it’s only your choice.

You are the single most important person in the script of history yet to be written. The credit will be yours. Theodore Roosevelt wrote:

It is not the critic who counts;

nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled;

or where the doer of deeds could have done better. 

The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena;

whose faces are marred by dust and sweat and blood;

who strive valiantly;

who err and fall short again and again;

who know the great enthusiasms;

the great devotions;

and spend themselves in a worthy cause;

who at the best know in the end the triumph of high achievement;

and who at worst, if they fail,

at least fail while daring greatly;

so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls

who know neither victory nor defeat.

Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 speaking in Los Angeles on the matter of the war in Vietnam had this to say:

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today.

We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late.

Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity.

The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at flood: it ebbs.

We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on.

Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”