Veterans Day. November 11, 2026. I slept well. I woke up without the sense that I had to solve everything before breakfast. This is the day the Lord has made. I said it because I meant it.
Then I asked artificial intelligence to be quiet.
I wanted to tell the story through in one sitting. I asked the assistant to wait until I said go. I got a surprising quantity of “mm-hmm” for a conversation in which I had expressly requested none. It turns out you can ask a machine a question about the origin of intelligence and still have to ask it three times to let you finish a sentence.
I’ve leaned on AI. It helped me find words, follow questions, and get my thoughts in order when I could barely keep track of the day. There were times I let my excitement carry me a good deal further than my judgment. I made the choices. I’m still learning what it feels like to pause long enough to make a different one.
A few days ago I sat in a recovery meeting where people took turns telling the truth about themselves. Someone would speak, sit down, and the coffee would keep going around. I thought about all the places where we reward a person for sounding certain. In that room I heard people say they were wrong and ask for help. I could practice that today.
I spent years in sales. I’ve said a product would basically pay for itself and watched a skeptical prospect do the math. The prospect usually won. That room full of coffee and confessions was the first place I’d been in a while where nobody was selling anything, least of all themselves.
Humility turns out to be honesty’s older brother. Pride needs a press secretary. Humility just says, “Yeah, that was me,” and asks for help. The men I admire most said “I was wrong” with no comma after it. No “but.” No “mistakes were made,” which is the passive voice slipping out the back door before the check comes.
Then I thought about the other end of a political career. On a politician’s last day, someone takes the nameplate off the door. By the time he gets home, the building is learning a new name. The office is gone. The wreckage is still there.
At Mount Doom, Gollum reaches for the ring with fire beneath him. The whole mountain is coming apart, and he has eyes for one small thing. Power can narrow a person’s world like that. A neighbor starts to look like a vote, a colleague like a favor owed, a disagreement at the dinner table like a challenge to authority.
Constituents remember how long it took you to call back. Your children keep a record of their own. Years later, a child can forget what started an argument and still remember the sound of your keys hitting the kitchen counter.
You can put off a hard conversation for one more vote, one more fundraiser. Then the calendar clears, and the people you kept asking to wait have stopped asking. You have all evening now. You could have used an evening like that ten years ago.
When you are useful, people laugh a little too quickly at your jokes. Afterward the room laughs only if the joke is funny. If you are lucky, somebody who knew you before the first campaign will finally tell you what they were trying to say all along.
So what do we do? Three small things I am trying. First, tell the truth in small rooms before demanding it in big ones. If I cannot be honest at my own kitchen table, I do not get to demand it from a podium. Second, thank people who tell me hard truths, instead of saying “well, actually.” My “well, actually” has a lot of mileage on it. Third, vote, spend, and share like honesty matters. Every forward is a little ballot for the public square I want.
And when the power leaves, there is a particular freedom in having no vote to count and no statement to issue. You can pick up the phone and listen through the part where you want to interrupt. You can name what you swept under the rug. You can keep a promise that costs you a Saturday and earns no applause.
As of November 11, I’ve appeared in court and am still waiting for a chance to present my defense. I don’t know when I’ll see my daughters. I miss them and love them. I’m grateful to the people who showed up. Today I can keep my word and tell the truth about my part while I wait.
— JC
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” — Mark 8:36 (KJV)
