Best read while blasting Bruce Springsteen’s “Lonesome Day,” or whatever uplifting piece of Americana you prefer.
These are dark times. Unprecedented times. And things are going to get worse before they get better.
But we’ll get through this. We’ll make our way through like we’ve done before and will do again. We’ll see each other on the other side—we’ll hug one another, gather together, and celebrate all of what’s been taken from us.
We’ll come through hopefully smarter, hopefully better prepared for the next challenge.
We’ll come through with a better appreciation for what’s been lost. The friends whose company we savored. The places where we congregated to celebrate life, love, and passion. The stadiums, churches, restaurants, and bars. We’ll kiss our loved ones and take in their presence with a renewed eye toward what they mean to us.
We’ll be scarred, and we’ll be scared, but we’ll start to heal. Some wounds won’t though. Some people will be lost, and for that we can never forget or forgive the cowardice, idiocy, and hubris of the officials who failed us. And we’ll need to support those who have been so hurt—financially, physically, emotionally—from this period that it will be difficult for them to become whole when it’s over.
I hope that we come out of this with a reaffirmed sense of the resilience and compassion that we like to tell ourselves we share as Americans. And I hope we’ve learned just how interconnected we are the whole world over—how we rise, and we fall, together.
So take care of yourself, and take care of one another. We need each other to get through this. And then we need to make sure this never happens again.
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