I’m older than a lot of people who are awake. That means I was around in the days when America still felt like America. We had a Memorial Day parade every year in grade school, and we’d walk down the suburban streets near the school waving flags and eating popsicles. We said the Pledge of Allegience everyday and we learned about the importance of Democracy throughout my years of schooling. Yeah, I was the generation that played outside until the street lights came on and cartoons only came on Saturday mornings. Nobody had much materially back then, but in hindsight, I realize we had so much more than we knew.

I see what we’ve lost already since those days, maybe with a clearer view than younger folks. I’m coming from a different point of view. I remember the America where someone came out and pumped your gas and wiped your windshield and said, “Sure is a beautiful day.” I miss the simplicity of life back then, when your father worked at the same company his whole life and your mother stayed home and made you a sandwhich when you came home from school. Oh, sure, America still had a lot to learn back then, and there were things we needed to fix, but we knew who we were as a people and we were united in our declaration that to be and live free was the most important thing in life.

Things started changing after Kennedy was killed, and the Vietnam War seemed to be a harbringer of things to come. I could palpably feel the change—as if some kind of dark cloud was gathering on the horizon. It would take me thirty more years to figure out where the dark clouds came from and who was responsible for them.

I wish I could say that everything is going to be all right—that the days of simplicity and good education and respectful children and happy families are going to come back sometime soon. I think it will happen one day, but I’m not sure we’ll completely right the ship in my lifetime. In some important way, the world is forever changed. We can never paddle back to 1952.

So, my scars are deep. So are yours. We have collective scars—even people who don’t completely understand what’s happening around them. Our lives, our country, our friends and family and neighbors are suffering and may suffer more as the days pass. Some of that suffering is hidden—a few unpaid bills, a lack of formula for the baby, the shock of filling up our tanks. And there’s the loss of a family member from Covid or missing people who are gone from our lives because of disagreements.

Scars used to be something we could be proud of at the end of a battle we fought. Those scars showed we had survived something. But the kind of scars we’re seeing now are wounds not inflicted by the long course of life, but purposely by others who have decided they want a different kind of world. They’re the kind of scars that are hard to abide because they bleed more and heal slowly. Those scars are as deep as our love for our families and our communities and our country.

It hurts me to see my neighbors picking through packages of chicken at the grocery store, or going in to the counter at the gas station to give them their last twenty dollar bill. It kills me to see so many young people in the obituary section of the newspaper and not worry about my own kids. I wake up most mornings afraid to look at the news, afraid to make plans for my old age, knowing all the while the next week, the next year—hell, even tomorrow are so uncertain. I’m not in control of my life anymore and so the future sort of looms ahead in the shape of a big question mark.

But here’s what I want to say: the man who said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself,” was a smart man. What he meant was that being afraid is worse than death. It steals moments from you, it steals joy from your soul, it robs you of the freedom to truly live. Ask anyone who survived the Holocaust how important dignity and hope were to their survival. Like those survivors, you can find peace floating on a shard of wood after a shipwreck, or watching as a cyclone passes by your house. It is possible to find a calm place inside of you no matter what is happening outside your window. What you do is just breathe. You assure yourself that no matter what happens, the dignity and pride you’ve built over a lifetime cannot be taken from you in any shape or form. Surrounding you and within you is all the beauty and goodwill you’ve collected through the years, no matter how long or short your life has been.

I fear death a lot less than I fear living in a world I no longer recognize. There are things worse than death—that much I know after all these years. Giving into the demands of your enemy or hiding your head in the sand rather than standing proud for what you believe in—those things, to me, are worse than death. For once you stop fearing death, you can raise your sword and run into battle. Or you can open your windows and see the truth penetrating the glass. That’s an act of self-love, however silly that might sound. But we all know the truth shall set us free.

Don’t think too much about the end of the war. That’s not half as important as what you do and how you approach today. We’re all learning to live in the moment—to be present right now and create change and engage in resistance by sheer will. That’s the only way anyone has ever changed tomorrow.

Like every other soldier in history, there are days that feel like years to me. I miss my old life. I take it out of my pocket and look at it like a picture from time to time. But then I pick up my sack and march on across the field, unafraid and ready to die if I have to. I’ve been called upon, I guess, to do this for my fellow man, for the family that will continue on when I have left the earth. Our battle today is the only hope for tomorrow. And so I do this for them.