A response that launched into a introspective rabbit hole
Responding to a thought on Facebook from a friend
Some days it feels as if the whole structure would be better off collapsing under its own weight, because the uncertainty we fear isn’t approaching — it’s already here. I don’t have a system I can place genuine trust in, and the systems we’ve built — political, religious, economic, social — eventually consume anyone who steps into them. Meanwhile the public drifts between apathy, shock, and paralysis, and a fraction of voices ends up steering decisions that shape the lives of millions. Funding choices get dressed up as consensus, but the fingerprints of influence and lobbying are everywhere, turning the idea of a “mandate” into a false signal. The constant swing of the wrecking ball wears on the spirit.
Living as a human being in the United States now feels contingent on how you’re categorized. Agencies like ICE act in ways that appear arbitrary or politically charged, which means even the perception of risk becomes its own form of pressure. Probability matters less than the weight someone feels in their chest when they imagine the wrong knock at the door. Even in places where demographics offer some insulation, the mind still runs its premeditation of misfortune — not to catastrophize, but to stay awake or tune out into apathy.
Old geopolitical threads are resurfacing, as if history refuses to stay buried. The unresolved pieces of the 1979 revolution, the echoes of Iran–Contra, the destabilization across the Middle East driven by leaders acting from a mix of retribution, security logic, and political survival — all of it folds into the same global turbulence. Across Asia, layers of nuance and tension continue to build. None of these forces are isolated; they’re part of the same storm we’re all trying to navigate with limited visibility.
At home, the question becomes how to keep the family grounded while the world shakes. The ride feels like a rollercoaster built without an engineer — unpredictable, jarring, and indifferent to the people strapped into it. Some days it feels like we’re characters in an old epic (Homer’s or the Clash of the Titans), caught between forces far above us while we’re simply trying to make it home intact. And when the noise is relentless, it becomes harder to tune into purpose, meaning, or anything deeper than the next breath.
What cuts the deepest is the familiar pattern beneath it all: the harmed are expected to adapt, to read the room, to stay composed, to shrink themselves so others remain comfortable. The one who caused the harm — whether through malice, negligence, or the absence of self‑reflection — moves forward unchanged. No accountability. No correction. No growth. The weight falls on the person who already absorbed the impact.
And the most frustrating piece is watching people treat morality as if it were a currency — spent freely when it buys advantage, withheld when accountability calls for payment, and devalued the moment any system asserts pressure and demands loyalty over conscience (Comply or die, trust me bro-isms). These systems don’t care about the masses; they respond to the fraction of a percent with access and actually pulling the levers. The rest of us mortals/peasants/citizens are left to manage the flood of inputs, to separate signal from noise, to maintain clarity and reason in a landscape that rewards neither.
I’m no longer willing to pretend that expectation is reasonable, moral, or sustainable — not in personal relationships, and not in systems that keep repeating the same pattern. The only path that feels honest is the one rooted in virtue, in disciplined perception, and in the refusal to abandon humanity even when the world around us treats it as expendable.
Hope the kiddos and your wife feel they have a father figure trying to work with mom to steer through this mess. A reread of Dieter Uchtdorf’s experiences were helpful for me recently as was reading Mark Manson’s Blue book (ha!).
