I’ve got a bit of writer’s block this week and it is in no small part a result of a mind swirling with a million racing thoughts about society, none of which have much to do with One Health.

As I sit here, mentally spinning out with this internal existential crisis, whilst simultaneously watching my neighbor do the most normal, boring life stuff, I can’t help but feel as though my thoughts and feelings are as divided as our Nation’s current politics.

As my neighbor sprinkles her plants with food pellets, now that the rain has let up for a little while, I sit here stewing over the words of petulant, toddler-like leaders as they attack another amendment of our constitution.

How can life feel so chaotic and tragic and so pedestrian and ho-hum at the same time? I thought, perhaps, it was a result of getting older, but just last year I found myself looking backwards in time only on occasion. The past several months, however, have had me flipping through the pages of my life, searching for moments that remind me of an existence in the “before times”, as we often call it.

Sometimes I think to when I was in tech school for the U.S. Air Force, or maybe one of our iconic halloween parties. Sometimes it’s a memory of when my son was a baby and our previous dogs were still with us. They loved hikes, people, and other dogs. Life was easy with them.

The before times is sort of a subjective era. Most of the time we mean pre-2015, before Trump decided to run for president. Sometimes it means pre-2020, before the world shut down from a pandemic. Each of those moments is starting to feel quaint, like child’s play, compared to 2025. Perhaps the before times is pre-2025 and those other moments were just prerequisites for our current state, similar to college course progressions (“I’m sorry, you can’t take 2020 until you’ve passed 2015 with a C or greater”).

I think I keep looking backwards lately because before 2025, certainly before 2020, and, no doubt, before 2015, those memories were just….memories. Simple moments my brain catalogued from my life, big and small, that were fun to reminisce about or were maybe a reminder of how far we, as a family, have come. Today, these memories serve as something greater. A reminder of a time when I had friends with all sorts of beliefs and we debated with curiosity and laughter. A reminder that I was once safe in this country, no matter what I believed, how I looked, how I identified, or who I was. A reminder that I once looked at a stranger, not with suspicion but, rather, with….nothing, honestly. A stranger was just a stranger.

I’m not sure where we go from here. My memories of the before times will continue to remain just memories, as I am not certain our country can ever go back. We will see something new be borne out of this turmoil. Whether it will be great or terrible remains to be seen. I’m not ashamed to say that I am worried and that some days I am even scared. I do know this: a group that strives for so much power and can only exist through intimidation and silencing their opposition, will eventually attack every citizen of their Nation until they cease to have allies and supporters.

This is already happening. And when so many of the supporters are voters of single issues, it becomes so much easier to fail them. Another complicated emotion, as I do not wish harm on anyone, but I’ve never hoped for failure so much as I do today because perhaps their failures will lead to a Nation’s victory: a fractured society, reunited.