Today, I need to share something personal with you that I just don’t talk about much: I often struggle with a feeling of helplessness.
I look around and see so much that is plainly wrong. A president whose behavior grows more erratic by the month, and whose decisions are hurting real people. A military I served in and love that is being pulled into conflicts with no clear path to victory, its reputation worn down by the people who are supposed to protect it.
Ukrainians, who have fought and died for the same freedoms we take for granted, being thrown under the bus. Money spent with no regard for the people paying for it. Corruption done so openly that it barely makes the news anymore.
And on some days, saying all of this feels like yelling into the wind. You write the piece, you do the interview, you make the argument as carefully as you can, and then you watch people shrug. Or worse, you watch them dig in.
If you’ve felt that way too, this one’s for you. I recently had a conversation with my wife, Sofia, that changed how I manage all this, and I want to share it with you.
What we’re actually responsible for
After many years of working through what’s happening to the country I love, here’s what I came to: all we can do is tell the truth.
That sounds simple, maybe too simple. But stick with me, because I’ve found real freedom in it.
Everyone has a personal responsibility to look at the available facts and come to their own conclusion. That responsibility is theirs, not mine. I can’t do it for them, and I was never supposed to.
Once you really internalize that, the job gets clearer. My job isn’t to make anyone believe anything. My job is to be honest, to say what I see and what I know as clearly and fairly as I can, and to keep doing it.
Two kinds of people on the other side
I’ve also had to be honest with myself about the people who disagree with me, because they aren’t all the same.
Some people look at the same facts I do and come to a different conclusion with a good heart and good intentions. They love this country. They want what’s best for their families and their neighbors. They weigh things differently than I do, or they’ve heard a different set of facts.
Those people deserve the truth from me. They deserve my respect, my patience, and my best argument, not my contempt. Many of them are still listening, and plenty of them change their minds over time. I’ve seen it happen.
Then there are people who have simply picked a side. They joined a movement, and somewhere along the way they closed the door on anything that might challenge it. No fact gets through, because the conclusion came first.
I used to spend a lot of energy on that second group. I’d lose sleep over it. What I’ve accepted is that I can’t open a door someone is holding shut from the inside. What I can do is keep telling the truth, so that when they’re ready to open it, and some of them will be, the truth is still sitting right there waiting.
I learned this lesson the hard way on the January 6th Committee.
What happened that day was devastating for our nation. We laid out the evidence carefully, much of it from Republicans and from people inside the President’s own orbit. It was not a partisan story.
And still, a lot of people looked away. Some of them were people close to me. I’ll admit that frustrated me then, and some days it still does.
But looking back, I’m proud of what we did, because we did the one thing that was ours to do. We put the truth on the record, under oath, in public, for history. Nobody can take that back. Whether every person accepted it in that moment was never in our control.
All we could do was tell the truth. And we did.
Why I’m optimistic
This is where the helplessness starts turning into something else.
When you stop trying to carry the weight of everyone else’s conclusions, you put down a load you were never meant to carry. You’re responsible for your own beliefs and your own actions. That’s it. And that’s enough.
Over the long run, the truth has a way of winning. History is full of moments when the people telling the truth looked outnumbered and outshouted, until all of a sudden they weren’t. Lies need constant upkeep. They have to be repeated, defended, and propped up again every day. The truth just has to be told and then left standing, and it lasts.
So I’m choosing peace over panic. Not passivity, because I’m going to keep speaking, writing, and showing up. But peace. The kind that comes from knowing I’ve done my part honestly, and trusting that honest people, plenty of them, are doing theirs.
If you’ve been feeling like you’re yelling into the wind, I’d ask you to look at it differently. You’re not yelling. You’re planting. Not every seed comes up this season, but the ground is more fertile than it looks.
Tell the truth. Be kind to the people who are still listening. Let go of the ones who aren’t, for now. Then rest easy, because that’s all any of us can do, and it’s more powerful than we think.
- Adam
Thanks. I’ll remember this when I’m feeling like everything I am able to do isn’t enough !
Thank you for being a truth teller, your son will grow up proud of his father.