Beyond the BBQ The True Meaning of Memorial Day

The following program is a Hurdle Pit Studios production. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to Wie's Thoughts. I'm Terry Weiss, your humbled host, and I'm so incredibly glad you decided to spend some of your valuable time with me today. Pull up a chair, sit back, and let's gather around our virtual campfire, shall we. We got a lot in our minds today, and honestly, there's no better place to hash it out than right here in the newly treated Purple Pit Studios. It's more than barbecues, it's more than gathering with friends, it's more than just a holiday, and we're going to talk about it this time on Wife's Thoughts. So grab your favorite beverage of choice, get a seat around the virtual campfire, and let's get ready for another episode of Weiss's Thoughts. It's all coming your way right now. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to Weis's Thoughts. I'm your host, Terry Weiss, and I am so incredibly grateful, I really am that you're spending some of your valuable time with me here today on the podcast. And hey, if you like what you hear. If you enjoy Wis's Thoughts, won't you do us a couple favors? First off, share us with your friends, family, all right. You can do it right through your local podcast provider. And secondly, would you leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast It really helps the algorithm. It gets the word out, it lets people know about Why's thoughts, and I would greatly appreciate it. All right, thank you very much. By the way, I'm going to ask you to a couple of favors. If you're enjoying the White Thoughts podcast. First of all, share us with your friends, your family, Tell your friends, tell your pets, tell your neighbors about Why's thoughts. Also, on your favorite podcast provider, would you do us a solid just leave us a positive rating and review If you get something out of the podcast each and every episode, that would be fantastic. You can do it and share us rate on your favorite podcast provider, and you can also listen to more episodes of the podcast at Purplepit Studios dot com. Just go to Purplepitstudios dot com, look for the podcast section there and select Wife's Thoughts amongst the other ones that we have there. As well. And what else can you do here? Let's see, you can again go to your favorite podcast provider what have you, and also check out the YouTube channel aptly named Wife's Thoughts. On the YouTube channel you can see video, audio and all kinds of goodies rate there. Just go to YouTube and look for Wife's Thoughts. All right, So, before we get underway with the topic of this week's episode of the podcast, you know what time it is. No, it's not that, mister producer. Yeah, that's what it is. It's that time again. It's time for the wordsmith word of the episode. That's right back by popular demand. It's the wordsmith word of the episode where we try to expand your vocabulary and your word knowledge so you can show your friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family what a big brain you have. And this week on the podcast, the wordsmith word of the episode is sure, Oh one more time for me? Oh computer generated voice charette. That's spelled cha double r E double t e h r r E t t E. And oh you asked Terry Pray tell what does it mean? It's a meeting in which all stakeholders in a project attempt to resolve conflicts and map resolutions. Let's hear it in a couple sentences. How it's used the last project dragged on. So this year's fundraising efforts will be organized through a sharette. All right? How about another example? After the charette, the team members split up to tackle their own tasks. Were goals in mind? All right? One more, Let's organize a sharette for the quarterly planning session instead of holding lots of individual meetings. All right. So that is the French mid twentieth century wordsmith word of the episode, charrette. Charrette. It's a meeting in which all stakeholders and a project attempt to resolve conflicts and map. Now you know, now you're smarter than most people on the planet, and you can tell everyone, Hey, we heard it right here on Wi's Thoughts. All right, let's get into this week's episode, shall we. Now, if you're listening to this week's episode of the podcast of Whie Thoughts, and you're listening on or around release day, we are right in the thick of the long weekend. The weather's warming up, the pool covers are coming off, and if you step outside you can probably already smell charcoal and lighter fluid drifting through the neighborhood. Right, But today we're hitting the pause button on the usual pop culture noise. We aren't talking about streamflation, and we aren't talking about life hacks. Today we're diving into something that requires a bit more gravity. We're talking about Memorial Day here in the United States of America. And look, I'm not here to get give you a dry history lecture. Okay, you know me better than that, But I do want to dig into the weird phenomenon in our modern culture. How a day dedicated to ultimate sacrifice somehow got transformed into the official holiday of discounted mattresses and overcooked burgers. Let's cut through the noise and look at what this day actually asks us. Now, let's you know, let's be real for a second, shall we. If you look at your inbox right now, it's absolutely flooded. Memorial Day, megasale, forty percent off, patio furniture code freedom. It's a little bazaar, isn't it. We've commercialized a day of mourning into a consumer festival. Now. Don't get me wrong. I love a good rabbi on the grill as much as the next guy. I love hanging out with friends and family there's nothing inherently wrong with celebrating life on a long weekend. In fact, you can argue that celebrating our freedom to live well is exactly what the fallen fought for. But it's the disconnection that bothers me. It's when the holiday becomes only about the days off and we completely lose sight of the price tag attached to that day off. So let's look back for a minute to understand how we got here. Memorial Day didn't start as a marketing gimmick. It started in the late eighteen sixties, right after the dust settled on the American Civil War, the deadliest conflict in our nation's history. It was originally called Decoration Day. Why well, because it was literally a day set aside for people to go out into cemeteries and decorate the graves of soldiers who never came home with flowers, flags and wreaths. Think about the raw emotion of that. This wasn't a celebration. It was a collective national exhale of grief. It was towns coming together looking at thousands of newly dug graves and saying, we cannot forget what it cost to keep this experiment alive. It wasn't until nineteen seventy one that the Uniform Monday Holiday Act kicked in, moving Memorial Day to the last Monday in May to give federal employees a three day weekend. And that, my friends, is exactly where the cultural shift happened. The moment you tie a solemn day of remembrance to a guaranteed long weekend in late May, the unofficial start of summer, the human brain naturally gravitates toward the sunshine, the lake, the beer cooler. The grief got pushed to the background, and the barbecue took over center stage. Now we're going to talk more about how we can bridge the gap in just a second, But first I got to pay the bills and keep the lights on here at Purple Pit Studios. Today's episode is brought to you up by our friends at Ideira Life. That's right, and they're in power Plus functional superfood green powder. 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I love this. I love this show. Raper Man and we're back everybody, and hey, if you're just joining us around the virtual campfire today. On this episode of White Thoughts, we're talking about Memorial Day and how to reclaim its actual purpose. And before we go any further, I want to clear up a major pet peeve of mine. Okay, it's a mistake I see on social media constantly every single year, people posting pictures of their living relatives who served in the military with the caption happy Memorial Day. Now. Sentiment is beautiful. Okay, it is. Don't get me wrong. We should absolutely honor our military, But there is a massive difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and confusing the two actually dilutes the significance of both. Just here's a real quick breakdown, okay, of the wife's guide, if you will, Veterans' Day happens in November. It's a celebration of all who served. It's for your grandpa who served in the Navy, your sister who's currently in the Army, and your neighbor who did a tour in the Marines. Let's say it's a time to shake their hands, thank them for their service, and buy them a coffee or maybe a a beverage of their choice. It is for the living and the dead who wore the uniform. Memorial Day is entirely different what we're celebrating here now. It's strictly for those who died while serving. It's for the men and women who went to work in uniform one day and never took it off. It's for the gold star families who have an empty chair at their dinner table, not just this weekend, but every single day of the year. When you tell a living veteran Happy Memorial Day, we actually feel incredibly heavy for them, because for a lot of combat veterans, this weekend isn't about them all. It's not about them at all. It isn't it's about the friends that they left behind. It's about the buddies they watched crossed a line and never come back. For them, this day carries a profound, often silent weight. It's a day of survival, guilt, of heavy memories and deep reverence. So let's just do this, shall we. Let's make a collective pack this year. Listeners, Let's use the right words. Save the thank you for your service handshakes for November. Okay, this weekend, let's focus on our thoughts and make those thoughts about the quiet spaces, the ones left behind, the people who paid the ultimate premium for the lives we get to live. All right, Enough of the heavy stuff, but let's move on, shall we? So how do we fix it? How do we balance enjoying our freedom while still honoring the sacrifice. I'm not telling you to cancel your barbecue. Like I said, life is short. We only get one ride on this crazy planet, and our time here is like a flash and it's gone. It's incumbent upon us to love one another, enjoy our families, and appreciate the beautiful days we are given. That being said, what I'm suggesting is that we replace complacency with gratitude. Imagine waking up on Monday, stepping out onto your porch with your morning coffee, and just taking sixty seconds of absolute silence, no phone, no scrolling, just looking at the horizon, and realizing that the simple, boring, beautiful privilege of having a quiet morning was bought and paid for by someone whose name you might never know. If you want to, let's say take this a step further. Look up the National Moment of Remembrance. It happens every Memorial Day at three pm local time. It's a brief, one minute pause when Americans are asked to just stop whatever they are doing and reflect. Think about how powerful that is. At three pm, you're probably in the backyard, the music is playing hot dogs around the grill. What if you just turned the music down for sixty seconds? What if you told your kids, your friends, your neighbors. Hey, let's take one minute right now just to remember why we're allowed to stand here in peace. That doesn't ruin a party. It elevates it. It gives the joy meaning. It reminds us that freedom isn't the default state of human history. Freedom is an anomaly. It's a fragile, precious thing that has to be defended, and the people who stood in the gap to defend it deserve at least sixty seconds of our undivided attention. As we wrap up today's thought, I want to leave you with this. Let's try to be a little kinder to each other this weekend. Let's look past the political divisions, the online outrages, and the social media noise. When you look at the flag this weekend, remember that it doesn't belong to one political party or one ideology. It belongs to every single person who laid down their life so that we could have the right to disagree in peace. Thank you so much for sitting around the virtual campfire with me today. If you love this episode, please do me a massive favor. Will you hit that follow button on whatever platform you're listening on. Leave us a five star review. Your support is the fuel that keeps the fire burning here at Wis's Thoughts in the Purple Pitch Studios. Have a safe, happy, and truly meaningful Memorial Day weekend. Everyone, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and I'll catch you on the next one. Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you out there, and remember to see a change in the world, you have to be the change in the world you want to see. It all starts with you, the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss. Stop by the website Wis's Thoughts dot com just to make sure you spell my name right. Wysee Wiss Thoughts dot com, and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about Wife's Thoughts, and I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care