I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

I will fess up.

Some days I disregard my feelings of disappointment and instead go on with my life.

I ignore the impact of current affairs.

I am not keen on Monday morning quarterbacking.

I leave that to the experts. I find it exhausting at times,

theorizing about causes and effects, talking in a way that only makes me feel good about my

hot take. It feels empty sometimes, approaching the world's problems without, in the end, a real plan to act on.

I also hold it as a truth that what's done is done. One must move on.

But each day is an opportunity to build from the unimaginable. I double down on the values I hold

dearest, what I wish to manifest in the world in my everyday interactions, decency, love for

neighbors, a sense of justice and hope in our country.

I recommit.

Doubt and uncertainty about the future is not new.

Often my views are challenged,

sometimes to a point where I come close to relinquishing what I believe.

During such moments, I reach for poetry. Poetry reorientes me,

does the work of humanizing, of not letting me devolve to despair. Its insistence on staying present, on paying attention, on speaking to the beauty in nature,

and the beauty in us renews my faith.

Today's poem models for me a necessary absorption and attention to the world, but also

an embrace of paradoxes and the difficulties of speech

as pathways to understanding the inscrutable.

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