America The Beautiful

He was boasting but it was a helpful boast, meant to raise both of us. His pride was to be shared with me so that as I understood what he was saying, it could be my pride too. This is a spirit that has largely disappeared from our public speech. There is nothing to be shared, the common is now just the sum of everyone’s plunder, of each person’s treasure. The sharing , the acknowledgment that some piece of what I have is due to the next guy, because without the next guy’s efforts, we would all have less, it’s largely gone. And in this man’s explanation of the care and the work gone into the beauty of his city, I recovered that piece of myself that was worth sharing in the first place