How many times have you heard a child say about a father, “I’ve only seen him cry once,” or, “I’ve never seen him cry?”

Last night, at the DNC, our future VP Tim Walz’s son, Gus, stood up during the acceptance speech, sobbing, pointing and mouthing, “That’s my Dad.” It was an unimaginably beautiful moment, one you can’t script, a true unfiltered expression of pride and affection. I imagine millions of people gasping, at once, a hint of sadness buried underneath the joy, a desire to be a part of a family so open and emotive.

Suddenly it’s 2008 again. The DNC feels more like a music festival than a political conference, a diverse representation of the real real America, a celebration of all lifestyles and socio-economics — from the hourly union worker to the billionaire class, the teacher to the scholar. Perhaps this is why the past decade has been so impossibly gutting. We’ve known all along what we’re capable of, what’s buried under the surface, and finally all that potential has come flooding out these past few days.

There are few things I love more than driving in circles in the middle of nowhere, alone, lost in my own world. No matter what waits in the darkness, I always know whose voice will accompany me.

Sports prepare us for life’s bigger battles, for those moments when stakes are far larger than a trophy and bragging rights. Right now, we’re in the most competitive game in America’s Democratic history, and there’s no lesson in losing. And this is where the football metaphor dies, the moment when we package up all those life lessons and put them to good use. We need our Coach Taylor to co-lead us to victory, and then govern us for the next four to eight years back into a post-MAGA sanity.

What’s most interesting about documenting your own life isn’t how others receive or respond to it, but rather what you learn about yourself when you revisit that work years later. What was foreshadowed, which traumas were breaking through the surface, what was being withheld or subconsciously overlooked.

A Kamala win in November won’t heal our dying Capitalism, our underinsured, our hopeless anti-empathetic approach to the homeless, our underfunded schools, our aggressive military presence, our support of genocidal leaders, or the incoming onslaught of more tech disruption, but it will at least pause our free-fall into Fascism for the time-being.

To truly know loss is to expect its next arrival time. It becomes instinct to hold ourselves back as protection from what is inevitable, to keep others at arms’ length or to move around enough so as to never get so close to someone else again. But that instinct also holds us back, in the same way that closing ourselves off to new art does. It keeps us trapped in a past that can never be again. And besides, what a gift it is to be close enough to anything worth losing.

For the couple getting married, a wedding is a beginning, a blurring of two dysfunctional families into one. For those of us in attendance, a wedding is an opportunity to acknowledge our shared histories, bury differences in whiskey, and be kind to those we may never see again.

Newman’s song, Baltimore, was released in 1977. His version in his voice feels like blasé commentary, as if those he wrote about were made of papier-mâché, incapable of suffering. Then, a year later, the great Nina Simone released her interpretation. She built a different world, a place so visceral you can almost feel the pavement against your cheek, drown in their shame and disappointment.

If we don’t start raging against the machine, the machine will soon rage against us.

I’m also reminded that no matter where we go, back home or to a place we’ve never been, there are always other weirdos waiting to be found. When I step off that plane next week in Cleveland, I’ll be looking for you, whoever you are. I’ll recognize you immediately as the sort of person my Mom would’ve called “different.” “Weird.” You’ve alway been and always will be my people.

My current days are bookmarked by anxiety, a what’s now and what’s next ‘greatest hits’ list of all that’s gone wrong or has yet to implode. And let’s be honest, there’s no shortage of reasons to fear our modern moment. That’s the best time to tune it all out, throw on a song like Blue Line Swinger, and breathe in the beauty that remains present around us — and when you’re ready to let it in, there’s still quite a bit to appreciate.

Sometimes home is just a misunderstanding, a convergence of unmet needs and faulty expectations, a place where we’re reminded of who we once were or never wanted to be. And yet it’s also a place that marks time and progress, where we can compare our present and shadow selves, to see how far we’ve come. There’s beauty in that, after all. Sometimes we must stop, for just a moment, and catch up with ourselves before we can move forward to whoever we’ll become.

Perhaps the light in the crack here is that change is our only way forward, one final stand before it’s too late. The kids are wise enough to know dusty, old ass politicians can’t save them, know their parents aren’t trying to save them, and fully expect they’ll have fewer opportunities with more debt while battling the highest levels of mental health challenges of any previous generation. They’ve already lost too much to trust anyone other than themselves. The moment Joe dropped and Kamala stepped in, they rose from their ashes.

I’m not religious, by anyone’s standards, but I’ve studied sone theology and have attended enough multi-denominational services to know that in the eyes of God, any God, we’re flawed by design. Meant to suffer, learn, suffer more, learn again, suffer longer, then die. And in the suffering, we’re meant to find purpose, love, laughter, ourselves. And the thing is, we often do because we’re without other options.

Suffer. Suffer again. Suffer better.

Or something like that.

The Irish have a way of packing wisdom in every sentence, as if the meaning of everything is buried tight within each detail. A story about a local drunk is a generational epic about poverty; every song an homage to characters who’ll live forever, passed through fiddle strums and clever lyrics.

I don't believe much in Karma these days. It's been quite some time since good deeds were rewarded over bad. Capitalism is antithesis to karma, a system built on greed, a lack of conscience and gaslighting of the masses. That's sort of the problem with us Liberals these days: we sit around abiding by a system of outdated rules, feigning surprise when we lose over and over to the side redefining the rules.

Tonight, I’m here thinking about the history of protest songs, and to do so begins a long sobering road through America’s sordid past. When we celebrate, what are we celebrating? Freedom, sure, and I certainly don’t take that for granted, but it’s not exactly a guarantee — even now — and ours was a country built and maintained by the least-free amongst us. Given that we basically use “rockets bursting in air” in lieu of birthday candles, perhaps we’re a bit too good at celebrating our dominance, our power, our gunpowder muscles?

So if you don’t like this post, it’s ok to tell me. I’ll be fine. It’ll just send me into a deep existential spiral of extreme, unfathomable emotions that force me to question my holistic self-worth while likely leading me to never write again. Kidding. I’ll keep writing. I’ll just know that you don’t love me because I’m not worth loving. Kidding again. Sort of. It’s no big deal. Really. I’m fine. Totally fine.

I’ve shape-shifted through life, squeezed myself into places I didn’t belong, shed skins in favor of skins that fit others’ expectations of who I should be. A character actor in my own life, trying on identities, jobs, cities. Perhaps an identity crisis is nothing more than a reassembling of the parts, a resurrection of the self that went missing along the way. I suppose it begs the question, can we really understand ourselves if we don’t have dark days, if we don’t see a stranger in the mirror, if we don’t fall apart, rewind a little bit to pick up on those lost details?