The Future

It has been a long time sinc my last post, but I have a good excuse. My wife and I welcomed our first child into this crazy world. Needless to say, since he was born, my son has monopolized my time.

But, while I have been getting used to changing diapers and going without sleep (which reminds me of combat operations) I also was given a glimpse into the future.

I was standing at my window, holding my newborn son in my arms, and I looked into his eyes - eyes that were still struggling to get used to the outside world - and I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the situation. In my arms I held another human life, a life I helped bring into this world, and a life I knew I would do anything, anything in my power to protect and nourish and raise and prepare for the outside world.

But it is this outside world that I worried about in that same instant. For the rest of my life, I will be worried about how my son navigates this world. And, despite my initial hopefullness, I could not shake a sense of foreboding.

This foreboding is grounded in my fundamental belief that this country is in serious trouble. I sense a decline in our standing in the world, in our power, our influence, in our economic well-being, in our government, in our principles.

I sense we are in trouble and we lack the leaders we need to get out of this trouble.

Most importantly, we lack the will to get ourselves out of this trouble. We do have the same sense of self-sacrifice that our forefathers had. And with out this sense of community and personal responsibility, we will fall.

And all of this was going through my mind as I gazed into my son's eyes. He was seeing the world for the first time and I wondered if he saw the perils coming at him. I wondered what his life had in store for him. I wondered if there was anything I could do to protect him from the coming storm.

I wondered if I could change the future.