I bumped into someone last night while shopping — a friend who told me he was feeling despair over the state of the world.
He seemed genuinely despondent.
I told him:
On April 29, 1945, my grandfather was one of the first American soldiers to enter and liberate the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau.
I suspect that if he were alive today, my grandfather might consider our world decidedly better than the years he spent fighting in Europe, watching his friends die from bombs and bullets, and witnessing the widespread death and destruction of an entire continent.
I told my friend that in 1969, my father was drafted and sent — against his will — to Vietnam to fight in a war that was in many ways foisted upon the American people through deliberate government deception. It was also, in many ways, an unjust war that sent so many working and middle-class Americans to fight while Americans of means often found ways to avoid the draft through political maneuvering, economic loopholes, and nonsense deferments of every kind, including the President-elect.
It was a decade that witnessed a Presidential resignation, social unrest, environmental catastrophes, and the Cold War.
The United States was also suffering through a decade of stagflation. Mortgage interest rates were at 9% and would eventually rise to 13% by the decade’s end. Unemployment remained well above 5% and reached as high as 8% during the decade.
If given the choice, I suspect my father would consider our world today better than his experiences in the 1970s.
This isn’t to say we don’t face exceptional challenges. Unthinkable and unimaginable circumstances that make little sense to so many of us. Political malfeasance, climate disasters, international unrest, an enormous political divide in our country, and an approaching kakistocracy.
We face enormous trouble and seemingly endless turmoil, too.
It’s just good to remember that Americans have faced challenges before, and it’s possible that ours — at least at times — pale in comparison.
We may not be as historically relevant as we like to think.
It’s good to remind ourselves that Americans have always found a way forward. Perhaps we, too, will find a way.
That is why I like this image so much.
It’s a reminder never to give up.
Even when all seems lost, find a way.
We need this more today than ever.
In every small way, find a way.
Teachers, I think, understand this to the core. Every day, we are gifted with the opportunity to make the lives of young people better, in fits and starts and sometimes leaps.
It’s a source of endless hope for me.
And it worked last night, too. By some small miracle, at least in that moment, I lightened my friend’s load and made him feel better.
“Thanks,” he said. “I needed that.” Then he smiled.
I’m not sure if he awoke this morning — Thanksgiving morning — feeling the same way, but at least in that moment, I found a small way to make a person’s life a tiny bit better.
In every small way, find a way.
Happy Thanksgiving.
