Dear November 4th…

Dear November 4th,

I write to you from November 3rd, 2020 and I’m not exactly sure where to begin. Our nation is only hours away from you, and if I’m honest, I’m not quite sure what to feel about your impending arrival. You couldn’t possibly know this, as you are only one day, and your sunrise has yet to lift, but the last 1,460 days leading up to you have been some of the darkest in our American history, and so many of us are as trepidatious about what your sunrise will bring as we are today’s sunset, and what lies beyond it. In the last four years, we’ve seen our presidency, once heralded as the gold-standard pinnacle example of grace, dignity, and leadership atop the free world be infected with a cancer the likes of which we’ve never seen. Many of us have done our best, every day, to fight this cancer using the guardrails, safety nets, and tools of preservation given to us by our founding fathers some 300 years ago, but even they obviously couldn’t have predicted the aggressiveness and perverted passion of this cancer, and I fear the levies won’t be able to hold back his flood of corruption, criminal negligence, and chaos much longer. So I write to you from inside the only vessel I have left at this eleventh hour: hope. Your obviously unforthcoming response isn’t necessary, even if you could reply. But that by no means makes this a fruitless exercise. The fruit I seek from this singular correspondence could, I guess, best be described as a modern day message-in-a-bottle of hope. Sending out into the blue the thoughts, fears, and hopes of where we are and where we hope to be after your twilight has long faded, floating hopefully on a kind and cradling current that will deliver this bottle’s hopes and desires for our nation into a bay of fruition and happening where the water is clear as glass, warm, and calm.

You see November 4, I am afraid, but I am hopeful. I am terrified of what we’ve become as a country and of what you may bring with you, but I am so hopeful of a new beginning and the first steps of our path to healing. I am exhausted, but I am vigorously energized. The last four years have felt like swimming upstream the mighty Mississippi with cinderblocks tied to our feet and one arm tied behind our back, but within that chronic fatigue I have witnessed us unleash a bevy of second, third, and fourth winds I didn’t know even I had to stay in the fight. I am frightened by those that, under the president’s repeated direction, would gleefully cast aside our bond of countrymen to call themselves my enemy, but I am infinitely inspired by those I’m fortunate to call my friends, fighting alongside me. With violence, intolerance, and hate being condoned and encouraged like never before from the thing that calls himself our president, there are moments when I truly fear what you will bring with you, regardless of who wins this race. My black and brown brothers and sisters, my female family and friends, and my fellow Americans who call the LGBTQ+ community their home have already suffered so much. But then I look around me on this side of the valley and I see the legions of people of good will who’ve also risen to the call and I am filled with more hope, pride, and optimism than I’ve ever felt before. I flip-flop between days where I am so proud of the work my wife and I put in during this fight and nights where I am plagued with the nightmares that I didn’t do enough. But I seek solace in the idea that the only thing preventing good from triumphing over evil is when men and women of good will do nothing. And when I look around I see scores of my brothers and sisters in arms all standing up and fighting like hell together.

November 4, in the days leading up to you, in my many moments of fear, anxiety, and apprehension, I have fallen back onto the soft sands of titans-past and stood on their shoulders for air, perspective, reassurance, and a reminder of what once was, if for no other reason than to remind myself that it can be again. One such hilltop I have found frequent refuge on over these last few months, and where I find myself at this current moment right before the bell is rung, is the inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy. I don’t know what you will carry with you November 4, and I acknowledge that you most likely won’t bring with you any finality at all. In fact I’m well aware you will most likely be the beginning of a long road to any final conclusion. But it is my fervent hope and prayer that you, at the very least, set us onto a path that will eventually lead us to a moment like this one again. A moment of true unadulterated and peacefully transferred power, dignity, humility, leadership, maturity, and gravitas delivered by a man actually worthy of that moment, of that office, and of that most sacred role. So once more, I’ll ride the shoulders of a giant to impart to you exactly what it is I hope and pray you deliver us. As President Kennedy said through vapored breath with a controlled cadence measured with equal parts confidence and humility on that cold and clear January morn not that long ago…

“United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do — for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

So let us begin anew — remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”

This is what I hope for. A successful excision of our cancer and four forthcoming years of healing, growth, and renewal. A return to facts over delusion. A return to truth over lies. A return to decency over lunacy. These are the things I hope for. But bring what you may, November 4, because no matter what comes with you and after you, one thing I’ve learned from those I love and those I’ve spent the last year fighting beside, is that we’ll be ready. Ready to continue the fight, aid the cause, and work together to push the needle of our national moral compass a little further back towards true north. We’ll get there. Whether you bring us there or not. We will get there. Because the darkest night sets in just before the brightest dawn. And like President Kennedy, I have faith that the energy, the faith, and the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country once again and all who serve it. And the glow from that fiery sunrise, whether it comes with you or not, will truly, eventually, re-light the world.

Sincerely,

Ben