"That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us."

This is a line from Senator Kennedy's eulogy for his brother Robert in 1968, which I have listened to many times to on this YouTube clip, almost compulsively on repeat. Although I had heard the speech before, it feels increasingly moving, its words increasingly salient. There are many other lines from the speech that feel relevant at this time and hopefully can serve as a call to the young generation stirred to action in part by President Obama's rise to power:

The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."

These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. *It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.* Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

And:

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.* Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.

Several years of paying rapt attention as Ted Kennedy debated vigurously on the Senate floor on CSPAN, increasing knowledge about his impact on the trajectory of health care and other legislation, as well as a growing sense of cameraderie for all things New England, have led me to feel extremely tied to the outpouring of emotion at his death, a connection that is perhaps inappropriately great based on the short time I have lived in Massachusetts. However, his record, rhetoric and the New England base from which he comes have struck a chord in me for a long time. I remember how excited I was to be able to vote for him, though he was obviously going to win, just a few weeks after I moved here in 2006.

This evening I was one of thousands who made the brief trek to the JFK Library to pay respects to the late Senator, and was one of many who recieved a hug or handshake from Vicky Kennedy and several of the sons, nephews and grandchildren, a completely unnecessary yet touching gesture.

I also made it into the Boston Globe's headline article tonight (also on Boston.com main page). I think this only happened because the woman in front of me was crying with two cute, small children.

But even if by chance, it served to perpetuate a particularly eery chain of events, beginning with many years hearing my father talk about a special connection to JFK all the time and cry any time his life or death were feature on television, followed by the publication of this article in the Globe, after a spontaneous trip to the JFK library while my parents were visiting.

So I imagine my shock when I arrived home after paying my respects this evening to find a photo of another Wasserman in the Boston Globe with regard to the death of the same Kennedy in the same location....

Clearly, it's some kind of coincidence, but perhaps you have now begun to understand what this connection means to me and why I find the words uttered by Senator Kennedy ring so true and his record and legacy such a model to carry forward.