Memorial Day and just within the last few days, I’ve said “Happy Memorial Day” and “enjoy the long weekend” to people back home.
I'm embarrassed by it. The day very obviously isn't about a three-day weekend.
It's about people who didn't come home, and families who've carried that weight ever since.
I can't begin to understand that kind of sacrifice. I have no business trying. What I can do is be more intentional — in my gratitude, and in my hope/effort that we aspire for and achieve less conflict, not more.
I've been thinking about that a lot today from an unlikely place. Walked through Pompeii this morning. Nearly 2,000 years ago entire cities were erased. You stand in someone's bakery, their bedroom, their shop, and the distance between their day and yours collapses to nothing. Over 500 years of conflict and campaigns to control the place. The succession of rulers certain their moment and their control of a place mattered most. Rendered irrelevant in a matter of minutes.
What got preserved wasn't the empire or the credos. It was the now of the people living. A moment of bread mid-bake, a dog mid-struggle, a family mid-embrace. The human-scale instants. Nothing was spared. Only remembered.
So today and every day: indescribable but immense gratitude for those who gave everything and already short lives cut shorter. And for the families who carry their names and sacrifice forward.
And the greatest hope and desire that fewer and fewer are ever asked to.
That more will zoom out once in a while — far enough to see how small some things are, and how much of what really matters is the people right next to us…and the people right next to those we don't even know.