Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future

by Pete Buttigieg

Imagine the implications, I thought as I eyed the SUVs, the security men, the big graytail military jet in the distance, if all this were to fall into the hands of someone unfit to wield it.

They also viewed his case differently because they actually knew him as a person, not as a stock character. Over time I’ve observed that we are more generous, supportive, and pleasant toward people we actually know than toward those we understand only as categories or groups. Humans can of course be cruel in person, too, but as a general rule we seem less likely to hate from up close.

my real purpose visiting his grave site and the others at Arlington is to confront the dictatorship of chance, which compounds the cruelty of loss by allocating it for no clear reason at all.

something about exposure to danger impresses upon you that a life is not only fragile but single, with one beginning and one end.

For those who remember if not mourn an epoch of lost greatness, it may be impossible to accept that there is no return. But for those of us who were raised only among its shards, and who grew up questioning if it was ever as great as advertised, embracing the permanence of change is the only thing that can liberate us to move forward.

WE DON’T ACTUALLY WANT TO GO BACK. We just think we do, sometimes, when we feel more alert to losses than to gains. A sense of loss inclines us, in vulnerable moments, to view the future with an expectation of harm. But when this happens, we miss the power of a well-envisioned future to inspire us toward greatness.