Today was a rough day, and while I still search for the reason why today played out the way it did for me personally, my thoughts drift back to something I shared with the staff members of the city of East Lansing. I was asked to give a brief legislative update to the staff, and as with many things going on in Michigan these days, there’s not a lot of good news in it.

I personally hate it when I’m the bearer of bad news first thing in the morning. So I made sure to include some message of hope for them to hear. Because I’ve been watching From the Earth to the Moon, I decided today I would invoke President Kennedy. Specifically I said:

“William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred … We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

As I look past the events of today and as the state of Michigan looks past this recession that we find ourselves in, I think we should keep in mind that we will not be deterred. We choose to succeed.