In years prior I became aware of a feeling of displacement and dissatisfaction related to the planning, operation, and lifestyle encouraged within the United States cities I’d experienced. I’d heard of cities where diversity of architecture was encouraged, offering visitors and residents alike a pleasant view throughout the city limits. Some cities offered those people a variety of methods of traversing the city, either through buses, trains, or bicycles, or through wide, safe, and abundant sidewalks. Instead of only seeing the city through the window of a car, locked up in a traffic gridlock, these cities wanted people to get out, to take a walk and get healthy.

I was jealous of these options and wanted to find places within the United States that offered a life like this. My searching revealed that these communities do exist in the United States, and all I had to do was become exceedingly rich. Countries other than the U.S. had more options, and all I had to do was either be exceedingly rich or, if that wasn’t possible, just be born in those countries. So, a little harder to do.

I felt stuck in a life where I was aware of the better options out there but unable to ever reach them. I felt that I would perhaps remain forever disenfranchised within my city of residence, yearning to one day improve my situation, fueled by the hope that it could likely happen because things were going to get better.

Perhaps I was wrong to feel this way. Things have changed, so now too has my outlook. I think I’m giving up.

While the U.S. allies have definitely (and recently) come to its aid in response to natural disasters, they have their own citizens and problems to manage, so I only could hope for limited support. They have been placed in the unfortunate and sudden position of being surprise antagonists to the U.S. through Trump’s tariff plans and claims of criminal immigrant traffic, so I see much of their agency in aiding the country in their limited way largely being stripped from them from within the U.S. government. Regardless, I would never expect them to be the primary caretaker for the country; that responsibility would always most likely come from within. Unfortunately, the federal U.S. government is quickly being dismantled by the same inept and corrupt people working to sever friendly relations with allied countries. Not only is the (already largely feckless, to be fair) federal government being restructured to become deeply uncaring towards the needs of its constituents, it’s being deconstructed in a way to disempower it from being able to make systemic improvements in even the limited way it once could.

i feel like things are happening that millions of people are clueless about and that are so outrageous, so unbelievable that if i tell anyone, they will think i am being hyperbolic and crazy

— gg (@ggold328.bsky.social) January 31, 2025 at 5:05 PM

The checks and balances within the U.S. have crumbled, with public and private systems across the country acquiescing to the perceived dictatorial power of the Trump presidency, gleefully ripping out supports and structures that have been hard-fought to implement. Anything I write here will become immediately dated within a day, because the efforts of Elon Musk and Donald Trump to personally destroy or encourage others to participate in destroying are increasing on a daily basis.

This level of self-destruction is well-known to me, living in the deeply red state of Oklahoma, whose own government regularly takes measures to make its constituents more miserable. There is a continued disenfranchising of educators in public schools to send the state to nearly the lowest education quality in the country. The state remains as one of the leaders in the country in incarceration and police brutality. They foment Christian nationalism by ignoring the separation of church and state. They build car-dependent cities while also failing to train its constituents how to drive. Most recently the governor antagonized state employees who were continuing to work from home by largely reverting the benefits he originally promoted as beneficial. The state government makes an effort to shape the culture into a regressive, racist, patriarchal system of oppression that benefits only a select few.

This all reads rather depressing, doesn’t it? Perhaps one would argue that I’m being overly cynical, but the evidence is there that things are not right. Left in that mindset, one would spiral rather quickly into a depression and a level of anger that could shut out most if not all others over fear of betrayal or a lack of common core values. Which was what I did.

This process started strangely enough with a critical view on city life, but this deconstruction grew, and I began systematically sorting through my religious beliefs to catalogue what I had been told to be true versus what I could then feel had sufficient evidence to be deemed to be true. This grew to reconsider my views on history, politics, family, even personality. I studied and learned much, but it also came with a nagging sense of dread that the answers replacing my firm opinions were vague and uncertain. I was learning that we knew less than we realized, and it was beginning to feel less okay. I was struggling to understand what I was learning, because I suddenly couldn’t figure out who was telling the truth or if they could even be certain of what they were saying. I felt that I needed answers that felt as satisfying as the simple school-level indoctrination of my youth, but I was only finding anxiety-inducing middle-age-level unknowns.

I started to see my answers might lie in the flaws of the left-leaning spaces I had begun to inhabit. What I saw there was constant infighting and ever-present purity tests. Good people who made one choice deemed objectionable were being cast aside in search of the better option, even if one didn’t exist. I saw parallels to my own pursuit of happiness and the result in seeking perfection or at least a more perfect option was prone to failure and even less happiness than if one were to accept the lesser choice.

The writers I read and reread, however, belong to the group who write about the 70 percent in the middle. Chances are, they themselves are complex figures; for instance, Tolstoy or Munro. But they are also writers who understand my father’s two lessons. Being 60 to 70 percent full can be considered somewhat full. Suppose that a fraction of those who approach any situation with an all-or-nothing mindset understand the importance of being somewhat full; suppose that a fraction of those in the habit of demanding that things and people meet their expectation understand that 80 percent of the time, they will be disappointed, their feelings potentially hurt. That does not necessarily elevate their moral authority or give them the right to hand out easy verdicts. Suppose a fraction of them learn something from my father’s two lessons. The world may become a more civil place than it is now. Not a civil place—the world may never achieve that—but more civil.

Yiyun Li: “The Seventy Percent” — Harper’s Magazine

And wow, did that “less happiness” result occur. I don’t think anyone can pretend anymore that things are not looking great.

Faced with this ever-increasingly existential crisis, my desires to find small improvements in my life like a more walkable neighborhood suddenly felt shallow and unimportant. They were still good dreams to have, but the present problems in the U.S. lowers my expectations that those things are likely to improve. They seemed difficult enough before Trump’s second term brought chaos, but now they seem even less likely.

I’ve spent so much time thinking about what could be that I haven’t considered what is about my life. And there is so much goodness in my life. I am finally a homeowner, offering a level of stability for my family that I couldn’t offer them before. We have a big and inviting side yard that my children and their neighborhood friends can use for all sorts of fun. I live close to work, the cars are paid off, my wife and children like the neighborhood and their friends, and my job has taught me things that I’ve wanted to learn for more than a decade. Maybe giving up isn’t so bad?

“Surrender” is, I’ve been told, quite a powerful idea for parenting. So much is out of our hands: the timing of the birth, their health at birth, their temperament, whether or not they will latch. Needing to control these uncontrollable things can drive you and the child mad. Surrender to the situation. Save your energy for after it happens so you can deal with it.

Shreyans Bhansali: “The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood”

I think I’ve spent so much time seeking information about the corruption in government thousands of miles away that I’ve forgotten to spend more time in my actual community. I know the names of people who are definitely corrupt and will potentially harm me in some way in the future, so it’s not useless details up in my head, but I can’t do much about that information. What I don’t know are the names of my neighbors; considering present events and what they could mean for the future it seems especially important to build a resilient community. But even more than that it feels as if I’m depriving myself the opportunity to offer myself some peace for the future. If I want to make an impact, where better to start than my community?

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded … sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

George Saunders: “Failures of Kindness”

I don’t mean that I want to hide from national tragedies and pretend that they don’t exist. I know that I’m more privileged than others because of my race, my gender, even my location within the country. I have so many advantages that I don’t want to take for granted. What I think I’ve been doing is believing that finding any happiness with the things that I have been given or that I’ve earned is to become complicit in a system and to become a collaborator with corruption. But how will actively victimizing myself benefit anyone? I wonder if perhaps enjoying life while a government works to destroy it a better form of protest than to choose to lean into the destructive behaviors they are encouraging. I think it’s proving to be better for ourselves and others to take the time to find good things in our day rather than risk burnout through endless anxieties about what hasn’t yet been fixed in our system.

It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.

Mandy Brown: “Energy makes time”

I have my dark days; I slip into despair, losing the strength to offer my time and energy to my family. I grieve silently as I watch their faces search mine for signs of connection, but I can’t offer it to them in those moments. I don’t want to be present in body but not in mind for the limited time I have available with my family. My children will never be this young again. My wife and I will never be this young again. To miss out on these days is to build a lifelong regret of wasted moments that were the most important to me. Trouble will come to my door at some point, and I will need my family and my community to keep going. I think we might end up all needing each other a lot more soon.