Exemplars of Hope
Recently my wife traveled back East to attend the wake and funeral for a beloved aunt of hers. The day before she left, she was telling me and our son how these are usually large social events in her small hometown, and how as a young girl she’d attended more than she could remember. She turned to me and asked how many funerals I’d been to. I thought about it for a few minutes, then realized the only funerals I’ve ever attended were for friends; specifically, friends who’d died in service to the nation. Active-duty commitments prevented me from attending the funerals for my four grandparents, and mercifully my small immediate family is healthy and well.
Indeed, the only funerals or memorials I’ve ever attended were for young men and women who were taken from us in their ascendancies. Losing an aging family member or friend is undoubtedly heart-wrenching, but I suspect there might be something tragically beautiful in celebrating a long life with decades of stories, experiences, and love — the long life well lived we all pray for. Correspondingly, there’s something unjust when the one being mourned has barely reached 30, was healthy, strong, vibrant, and on the cusp of a truly spectacular adult prime. I, of course, cannot compare the two (yet), but I know first-hand how gut-wrenching it is to watch the young mourned. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago, but in the days that followed, and in response to a careless comment, I was left with another, wholly unexpected response — hope.
Hope is an odd emotion to experience at a memorial service for fallen aviators. Sadness, grief, confusion, and even anger — they’d all make more sense, but hope is what I had, and I think that has something to do with what (and who) I saw in the hangar that afternoon. America herself showed up, and exactly when many needed to be reminded of what truly makes Her great. She showed herself on the faces of the hundreds upon hundreds of young Sailors, aviators, friends, and colleagues who came to honor the fallen. Yes, many of the faces bore reddened teary eyes and the sounds of quiet sobs broke moments of silence, but their faces also revealed a resolve and commitment to doing the hardest things and doing them well in service to something larger than themselves. Each of those in the hangar that day will process their thoughts and feelings in their own time and manner, but I’m confident each will come out the other side with an even greater commitment to righteous excellence, and that itself is reason for hope.
Hope revealed itself in some other important ways as well. Despite a long overdue increase in the number of young women in the ranks, Naval Aviation remains very much a male-dominated endeavor. The two young women honored at that memorial were — simply stated — the best of us. Our nation invested heavily in their training, trusted them with the lives of others, and each did more to prove themselves on one recent deployment than many will do in a full career. They were trusted and counted upon to fly into harm’s way, performing a mission where success was measured by whether or not everyone else got home safely — and they did it, time and again. Their professionalism and general bad-assery serve as strong counters to anyone who, for whatever selfish, ignorant, insecure, small, and superficial motives, may suggest they didn’t belong.
Each of them stood, raised their hand, and said “send me,” and knowing there are countless others who look to these two as exemplars inspires hope. In the hangar that day, there were men, women, black, white, straight, gay, religious, agnostic, lifers and one-termers. Together, they were a reflection of the country they serve, and confirmed that while we cannot guarantee outcomes, when we avail more of the opportunity to serve, we’re better and more dangerous to any adversary because of it.
A week before this memorial I was in conversation with a civilian leader who, frustrated with the recent national election results, said aloud, “…the United States of America is a joke. I’m done.” I didn’t say anything, I understood and shared the frustration if not the sentiment, so I quietly turned and left the conversation…and then I thought about it. A lot. I thought about it through the lens of my own service. I thought about it through the lens of my wife’s service, and that of my brother-in-law, father, and grandfather’s service. I thought of it through the context of the only funerals I’ve ever been to, and then a week later I thought about it some more while listening to a bugler play Taps (again). And, I got pissed off, but not for the reason one might presume…not for some self-righteous reason, but rather because the flippant comment from the week prior belied a sense of capitulation.
The comment suggests things are so irrevocably broken as to be beyond hope. And yes, things are bad. We went from a geriatric president, incapable of doing the job, to another, also incapable of doing the job, all while Congress prioritizes fund-raising and cable news grandstanding over legislating. We’re about to have several very important cabinet positions filled by individuals whose qualifications appear to begin and end with individual fealty. We’re helping adversary nations meet their strategic aims by retreating from the global stage and abandoning allies who’ve sacrificed blood and treasure on our behalf. As I write this, we’re starting elective trade wars with our neighbors and some of our largest trade partners. So yeah, things are bad, but “the United States of America is a joke”? No, not unless we choose to accept that. But I’m not.
I won’t accept that defeatist and self-loathing attitude because I refuse to believe I spent the prime of my adult life in the service of a joke, and I won’t accept that the only funerals I’ve attended were for people whose lives were lost in the service of a joke.
As upside down as we find our current state of affairs, I retain a sense of hope because all the people I’ve mentioned, those still alive and those who’ve been taken from us, served a purpose greater than cheap imitation kings and their incurious sycophants. The sacrifices were an effort to slowly but steadily move forward toward ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the preamble of the Constitution (with specific emphasis on the word imperfect). The progress can be frustratingly slow, and at times we do take a step back after several forward, but we don’t give up on the ideal. We don’t give up on the hope. We don’t give up on the hundreds of young men and women that assembled in the hangar to mourn their friends. To give up hope at a time like this tells them, and their generational peers, that we don’t believe in them, and that the world we’re (largely) responsible for creating isn’t worth fighting for. I don’t believe that, and neither should you.
The following quote is from one of my favorite authors and comes from a book I’ve gifted more than any other:
“In our finest hours…the soul of the country manifests itself in an inclination to open our arms rather than to clench our fists; to look out rather than to turn inward; to accept rather than to reject. In so doing, America has grown ever stronger, confident that the choice of light over dark is the means by which we pursue progress.”
― Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
