Two Anniversaries Worth Celebrating

Anniversaries matter because they remind us that promises are meant to be renewed.

Twenty-two years ago today, my wife Marina and I were married.

People sometimes ask if it’s difficult having our wedding anniversary on Independence Day. Actually, I think we’re incredibly lucky. For one thing, it’s a date that’s impossible to forget. But more importantly, every Fourth of July we celebrate two anniversaries.

One reminds us of the day we stood before our family and friends and made promises that we’ve tried our best to fulfill. The other commemorates the launch of an extraordinary experiment in self-government that has endured for nearly 250 years.

Both journeys began with optimism. Neither has unfolded exactly as expected. In both cases, the reality has been richer, and more fulfilling, than the promise alone could have conveyed.

On our wedding day, Marina and I stood beneath the chuppah and promised to build a life together: to love and cherish, to honor and respect, to support and encourage, and to share life’s joys and sorrows, whatever the future may bring. Every anniversary is an opportunity to recommit to those promises.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed the revolutionary principle that all people are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights. The nation proclaiming those truths had not yet fully lived up to them. Yet that tension is precisely what gave the Declaration its enduring power. It established both a promise and a standard against which future generations could measure America’s progress.

For 250 years, each generation has wrestled with what those words demand of us. Our greatest moments have come not from pretending we’ve always lived up to our ideals, but from having the courage to move closer to them.

Frederick Douglass appealed to the promises of the Declaration. The suffragists insisted that its promise of equality be taken seriously. Martin Luther King, Jr. called America not to abandon its founding ideals, but to fulfill them. Our greatest reformers did not reject America’s first principles. They challenged us to become more faithful to them.

The same is true of a marriage. The journey is never finished. It is filled with moments of joy and gratitude, along with challenges that require humility, forgiveness, perseverance, and the willingness to recommit when we inevitably fall short.

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Anniversaries matter because they remind us that promises are meant to be renewed. Whether made to a spouse or embodied in the founding principles of a nation, promises endure only if we choose to keep them alive.

Today, Marina and I will once again recommit to the promises we made to each other twenty-two years ago. As America celebrates its 250th birthday, I hope we’ll do the same.

After all, the most important promises aren’t the ones we make. They’re the ones we continue to keep.

Happy anniversary to my beautiful wife, Marina.

And happy birthday to the United States of America.

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Bion Bartning is an entrepreneur and investor. He is co-founder of the Prohuman Foundation with Daryl Davis and Letitia Kim.

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The plaque that marks the exact spot where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is fading. So is the brotherhood he called America to build.

Both can be renewed.

Help us reach our goal to restore the MLK marker and advance a culture of brotherhood over division.