This story is part of our July 2026 Young Professionals issue. To read the print version, click here.

Happy birthday, America. Are you doing OK?

No offense. Something feels off. Maybe it’s just me. Life feels more worrisome these days — and yet familiar.

People are stressed and fearful of the future. Some think the country has lost its heart. Others claim that the great American experiment has failed. It’s over. Some days it feels like we, the people, are lost. Maybe we’ve just lost some perspective.

I remember our bicentennial 50 years ago. We felt lost then, too, after a failed presidency ended in shame and a bitter war that should never have started left 58,000 American soldiers and twice as many Vietnamese dead. Before that, we were lost in the unprecedented brutality of our Civil War and the long struggle for civil rights that still resonates today.

American history is celebrated for its successes of divine inspiration, but the road has always been uncharted and fraught with tragedy. We, the people, are still just people. Flawed and uncertain.

Now we have new challenges: technology, cultural divisions and the feeling that we’re losing touch with each other. It’s all in the wind. It shifts direction and intensity, but it never ends.

This is the reality of a world our colonial ancestors created, yet couldn’t imagine. But they believed in us. We’ve not only survived their vision, we’ve advanced it with great sacrifice. And now, somehow, we’ve started talking as though nothing good ever came of it. So how do we celebrate the nation’s anniversary at a time of uncertainty and division?

We get over ourselves — at least for one day — and remember that Americans are still good and decent people. We still love our children more than we love or hate politics. Most Americans — left, right, old, young, rich, broke — still want the same basic things: a safe home, a fair chance, dignity, purpose, love, laughter, a little security and hope that the next generation will do better.

We still help strangers during disasters without asking how they vote or worship. The same people screaming at each other online will form human chains in waist-deep water to rescue somebody’s grandmother.

That’s America, too.

We still fall in love, coach Little League, bring casseroles to grieving neighbors, cry at weddings, clap at graduations and wave at dogs in pickup trucks. We don’t wake up each morning focused on enemies, real or imagined. We wake up thinking of our loved ones and the things we will do today to make life a little bit better for them. Despite everything, most people still prefer kindness over suspicion in actual daily life. We want to give and receive smiles. So, let’s do that.

Let us do as we’ve always done in July: gather in parks and backyards for potluck cookouts, sodas and beer, hot dogs, ice cream and fireworks. Let’s take pictures of each other to mark these brief moments with family and friends, gathered to just enjoy each other’s company and celebrate the opportunities given to us by our grandparents and theirs before them.

We tend to take our freedoms for granted these days. Those who died for them would be delighted. It’s what they were fighting for: opportunity and a bright future that wouldn’t need constant bloody battles.

That’s still our national hope, isn’t it?

Let’s remember how lucky we are to live in a country that encourages differences of opinion, cultures and lifestyles. And let’s remind ourselves that despite our age and experience, we are still works in progress.

On July 4, more than any other day, we should come to terms with who we are and respect each other and our diverse opinions. Even those you think are nutty. Let us offer each other a hand and a smile — at least for today.

The divisions of our passionate beliefs are the freedoms won in the 250-year process we celebrate this July. Our fallen heroes in Arlington National Cemetery, at the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, in the battlefields of Europe and in local gravesites everywhere — these heroes did not die as Democrats and Republicans. They are Americans. They are us.

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