Frailty of Washington

I really felt the weight of our country today.

Well, maybe not the weight as much as the brevity of Washington, which had captured a special place in my mind since I was a child. I thought it was a place where people from all over the world came together to share ideas to better humanity. It is that to some people, but that work is done in the confines of Congress — which we really couldn't even get close to — and in back rooms, where government tries to keep people spending money and keep our minds off their work.

When I was a child, the Washington monuments were places that weren't confined by walls -- they rose thousands of feet in the air -- and the White House sat in the middle of a vast field supported by our nation's agricultural heritage.

But today, those apparitions were shattered, much like everything that seems to be too good to be true when you're a child. But the tangibility of the monuments offered a new place in my mind for Washington: the frailty of it all, and the responsibility we each have to ensure that our country, for better or worse, remains intact in one shape or another.

Freedom, after all, isn't some intangible thought but an evolving idea manifest in the daily actions of each of us. As long as we exercise freedom, we ensure our country, for better or worse, lives on.