It was early November, and there was a bracing quality to the afternoon sunshine. I hadn’t been to Washington D.C. for many years, decades even, and what a time to return.  I was in town for an event put on by the publisher of my book, 2008: What Really Happened – Understanding the Great Financial Crisis. Not surprisingly, given the recent election, the city seemed uncharacteristically unsure of itself.  Perhaps a bit like a one-term administration now being unceremoniously ushered out of town.

Walking past leafless trees sketching harsh outlines on the autumnal twilight, it was a bit shocking how quickly the afternoon sunshine ceded territory to a gradually chilling darkness.  I sensed that many of those passing by felt, as some of my friends and family did, more than a bit disquieted by the election, as if they had gone to sleep in a home they had worked years to make warm and welcoming  …only to wake up feeling entrapped by cold and imposing walls.

But then again, leaving the quivering limbs and growing shadows behind for a cozy little coffee shop on a busy street corner, there were also faces which, like others of my family and friends, seemed abuzz with hope and optimism.   In spite of their newfound energy, however, I couldn’t help but feel that, until recently, they too had harbored their own dark fears of the future.

Waking up the next morning, I had time to spare before the publisher’s dinner and, still feeling these crosscurrents, decided to take a long walk around the National Mall.  I had seen one or two of the great monuments before, but only in passing, crammed between meetings or before rushing to the airport to get home to my family, maybe in time to read a bedtime story to my young children.

Now taking it all in on this sunny November day, I couldn’t help but wish that, when my children were younger, I had brought them to experience this with me; to have walked hand in hand amidst the vastness of our history; feeling the power, the substance, and the durability of the journey we all share. As I walked from one impressive memorial to another, I couldn’t help but marvel anew at the timeless words Thomas Jefferson drafted at the tender age of thirty-three and at how these ideas, and others from those who drew inspiration from them, have carried us through periods of enormous darkness with an ever-optimistic vision for the future:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. – Thomas Jefferson – 1776

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. – Abraham Lincoln – 1863

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.  So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…  – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – 1933

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. – Martin Luther King – 1963

That evening, I went to sleep with a mind at peace.  Surely, a nation founded on these timeless ideals, one that has gone to war with itself to preserve and advance them, that has crossed oceans to defend them, that has withered assassinations and cataclysmic social revolt to fulfill them; surely such a nation will awaken again to endure and triumph over whatever challenges tomorrow might bring.  When I woke the next morning, the seeds of the poem shared on this page came to mind.

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