“One lives as one can. There is no single definitive way…If that’s what you want, you’d best join the Catholic Church, where they tell what’s what.” – Carl Jung
Duty
Last week, I was called for jury duty at DC’s Superior Court. Since I moved back to the capital city permanently in 2018, I've only received jury notices twice, which is unusual given how long I’ve been here. Maybe the DC government is like friends and family who have stopped sending me Christmas cards because they can’t figure out where I live.
There’s a perception that people tend not to like being called to serve as jurors. But data has shown that Americans strongly believe in themselves as fair jurors. I’ve always had a strong wish to be picked for a jury. Some might call this desire absurd or insane, but for me, it’s a duty, one of the few times this country asks you to step up and serve and be a good citizen.
The presiding judge told us that the case involved a man arrested for possessing an illegal weapon. The case would be heard in two days. There were fifty-four prospective jurors for fourteen slots. We filled out questionnaires, and I stood before the judge, and we reviewed my submission. I told him I have a friend in the FBI, which I’m sure impressed him. I neglected to mention that I believe my wife is a spy. They call this part of the process Voir dire, which is Latin, I think. Or French. It’s in a language that I got “Cs” in back in high school. It means – do you have a friend in the FBI?
Unfortunately, I wasn’t picked for the case.
It was a real bummer not to be picked as a juror, especially with everything going on right now in DC. I’m feeling a bit lost as to what I’m supposed to be doing as we shape the course of history.
There is no denying that we are living in unusual times in the United States. The country’s president is a convicted felon, who may or may not be criminally involved with a convicted pedophile who died in his jail cell under mysterious circumstances. This president has been impeached twice, lost an election, claimed it was rigged, was somehow reelected, given unprecedented immunity from his actions by the Supreme Court, and has made outrageous statements daily.
He dodged military service himself and demanded that American military personnel roll out the red carpet for a Communist dictator wanted for War Crimes for his invasion of another sovereign country, while using that same military to occupy the nation’s capital under the pretense that there was an emergency. He also handed the wealthiest man the tools to dismantle the federal government, where he shuttered or ground to a halt many agencies, while upending life for thousands of civil servants, and we haven’t spoken much about him since. This Republican Party regime is executing its playbook of overwhelming everyone and doing it with incomparable cruelty.
It's exhausting.
One Life
I recently finished the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Burkeman is a British author and journalist who used to write a weekly column for The Guardian. His work focuses on productivity and how managing time can lead to a better life. Four Thousand Weeks is Oliver’s redemption book, in which his expertise in helping others manage their waking hours and finding so-called “hacks” that supposedly give you an edge has been proven false. Instead, Burkeman has realized that life is about four thousand weeks, roughly giving us 80 years to live. What we do in those eight decades, however large and noticeable our marks are, isn’t that important, because in the end, we will all die, and nobody will care.
It’s one of the best books I've ever read.
Granted, this isn’t saying much, but I rarely want to revisit a book repeatedly. This book has made me pause and reflect more deeply on my journey toward a meaningful life. I feel fortunate to have picked it up at a local bookstore about a month ago.
Burkeman argues that we all have what he calls finitude. There is an end for each of us, and since there is an end, there’s no point in spending time thinking you can hoard more of it later when you have everything in place and can focus on what you really want to do with your life. It’s the argument we’ve all had, “I’ll begin a new routine on Monday, after I get through this hectic week.”
Time, the thing that exists outside of yourself that you can’t control, doesn’t care about your busyness.
When Burkeman was drafting his awakening, I had one related to my ongoing need to get organized. This was back in 2021, when I learned more about “attention management” – a concept that has stuck with me ever since. Since I can’t control the physical hour or even minute at any given point, I can control what I am paying attention to. What you pay attention to becomes your experience, and your experiences shape your life.
In Burkeman’s book, a Jungian analyst, James Hollis, frames the life question as “ What does your soul ask of you?” Does each choice you encounter diminish you or enlarge you? Lately, the decision to eat a lot of ice cream while nursing my hamstring injury from being awesome in softball has definitely been enlarging me, but I appreciate the point. It’s basic in nature, and yet in the world of constant noise, it’s easily missed. Are my choices helping me be the best version of myself?
And here we are in 2025, where I can officially state without exaggeration that the United States is now under a fascist regime. I don’t make that claim lightly, but occupying the capital city, taking over and installing himself as the leader of the nation’s cultural center, while moving to wipe out any reference to our history he deems to look too unfavorable to white men, is just a small example of a larger list of why the MAGA movement is far worse than the Compassionate Conservatives, or the Tea Party movement that proceeded it.
So what do I do now? What is my soul asking of me?
I have no idea.
But my finitude and fascism are on a collision course.
Options
I have participated in protests in the past, and I feel a particular bond with a group of people standing up peacefully against the oppressors. On the other hand, I consider John Brown a national hero, and the thought of sending fascists to meet Jesus is also appealing.
There are many things I’m not comfortable doing, like knocking on doors or calling random people. It’s just not something I feel is the best use of my abilities. All this does is lead to more questions.
What does it mean to be a citizen, and what do you do if and when we are called? Are we not being called right now? And to do what? Stockpile weapons? Flee the country? Pray a novena? Or simply volunteer to help elect anyone who isn’t a fascist?
On Wednesday, I spoke with my therapist, and he said many people that day have brought up the sense of what the heck do I do now? Fascism is spilling all over the place, and we were trying to walk around it, not knowing how you are supposed to clean it up.
That night, I spoke to a buddy, an early subscriber to this blog. We talked about how we got here and what we were supposed to do. We have playbooks from the 1930s, but then again, Hungary had those same playbooks in 2010, and look where they are now. Victor Orban was elected in 2010, and now, 15 years later, controls the media, doubled down on Christian-inspired laws, and has cracked down on immigration. For almost two decades, he has existed freely in Europe, and everyone shrugs their shoulders.
Is this where the United States is? The largest nuclear power, the largest economic power, the primary financial reserve currency, is now a fascist state where elections are rigged in front of us, while at the same time, eliminating methods for people to participate in those elections.
I don’t have the answers.
What do we do now?
I only have about 2,500 weeks left. The clock is ticking, and I need help with the answers.
This is the 350th essay I have published. At some point, I changed the concept from “lessons” to “essays.” It’s a great feeling to call myself a writer – an essayist even. Being an essayist sounds way cooler. I have all of you to thank. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you Monday.
I am with you Chris. I don’t know what to do either and I have less than 200 weeks left. I live in a very red area, they don’t need to cheat to keep my vote from counting.