Sometimes, a Diamond First Appears to be Just a Rock

"We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation  we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of." 

                                           -Editorial in the Harrisburg Patriot and Union, 1863. (rectified by an editorial in the Harrisburg Patriot News in 2013.)

The same can be said for many people and things we come across every day.  I am reminded about how many diamonds I happened to run with at PSU back in the day.  At the time, most seemed to just be a bunch of rocks.  Only looking back with the wisdom of a few years and the open-mind that time seems to provide, do I realize just how much of a diamond mine we had among our group in Happy Valley. I really do appreciate things so much better now.

When President Lincoln delivered his address in rural Pennsylvania in 1863, he was mostly ignored by those in charge.  A mere formality hastened his invitation and appearance and just a few minutes of time on the podium at the end of a long ceremony.  The main speaker spoke for hours.  Lincoln spoke for just 2 minutes or so.

Abraham Lincoln, at Gettysburg.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."              

                                                                    -Abraham Lincoln, 11/19/1863.

Sometimes it takes just two minutes to change the world.  And sometimes it takes 150 years to realize the world has been changed.