Light at the end of a rough, somber week

It was a rough week. More so than usual.

Friday evening I found myself eating late, grabbing a bite at a local brew pub. Two young men were sitting to the right of me, and the one next to me began talking before I could get fully settled in. 

He asked where I was from, then quickly added he was from New Jersey but spent most of his life in Portland before moving here. He was 22 and worked for one of the largest tech firms. I made a quick mental note that I would not talk about politics to this guy.

Something about the conversation made it clear he and his friend had also had a rough week. They were upbeat and yet still struggling. I just kept asking open ended questions as the time progressed. And then one of them, face getting a lot more serious, asked if I had heard about the murder of “Mister Charlie Kirk”.

I didn’t know Charlie Kirk, but I know and sometimes work with quite a few people who did. And yet, he had flown mostly under my radar until very recently. His rise coincided with my conscious decision to pull back from national politics and social media. He clearly not only mastered each, but was at the age of 31 someone who was shaping both, very directly.

I had started to hear from friends of mine – notably those in my own age range and from my former corners of conservative politics – about meeting and engaging with this nice young man. “A great guy”. He was making a difference.

The results are there, even if we weren’t being told about it. Or why they were happening.

Our youngest voters – and more specifically our youngest male voters – have been rejecting leftist politics and leaning more and more to Republican candidates. While I still chose not to talk politics with the two gentlemen I met during dinner Friday night, we did keep talking about Mr. Kirk, his impact, and what they as early twenty-somethings would face in the days and years ahead.

I encouraged them to not weigh themselves down by the issues of today in such a way so as to lose sight of tomorrow. This week was bleak. So was this week 24 years ago. So was the Cuban missile crisis. So was the Civil War…

Every generation of Americans has faced real and stark challenges. Every one was unique. Every one required different individual and collective responses. And thus far, we’ve managed to overcome each of them.

I emphasized that talking to older folks – and old folks, specifically – was a decent way to get perspective on this and other life matters. I told them about significant purposeful conversations I’ve had with 80 and 90 year olds. This is the only way we can time travel. They’ve seen things we never will. They’ve talked to people that go back another half century or more in shared experiences.

While there was a time when my work life was predominantly dealing with twenty-somethings, it occurred to me as I was telling these gentlemen this that I was now closer to the 80 year olds I was talking about than I was to their age. I also realized I wasn’t talking to their age cohort that much anymore. Perhaps if I was, I would have earlier and better understood Charlie Kirk.

A couple of days before Kirk’s assassination, NBC news released a poll of 18-29 year olds’ views of success, and then divided the results by men who voted for Trump vs women who voted for Harris. I had to do a double take on young Trump male voters’ view on what would make them successful. Their #1 criteria was having children with 33% citing it, and their 4^th priority with 19% selecting was getting married. Women voting for Harris ranked these tied for 10^th place, with just 6% believing these were signs of success.

If you had polled my generation in the 80’s or 90’s, I would have been willing to bet that those priorities would be reversed. So what has changed?

I won’t go as far as to credit Mr. Kirk with all of this. But instead of just dropping memes for clicks, he showed up on campuses, where the kids were. He engaged. He smiled. He encouraged those who disagreed with him to sit down, take a deep breath, and talk.

He made an impact. He got killed for it.

It was a dark, rough week. What we choose to do with that this week is up to us. As one of the “older folks”, I’m glad to see the kids working on it.