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

by Pete Buttigieg

But for others, work can only be meaningful if its fundamental purpose is in things that would matter even if no one would pay you to care about them. No matter how much I liked my clients and my colleagues, delivering for them could not furnish that deep level of purpose that I craved.

Trucker hats are worn without irony here; the hipsters are welcome but not in charge.

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.

The problem, politically, is that we keep looking for greatness in all the wrong places. We think we can find it in the past, dredged up for some impossible “again,” when in reality it is available only to those who fix their vision on the future.