I Worry About the World My Son Is Growing Into

I worry. A lot.

I worry about myself. I worry about my son. I worry about the world we’re handing him and whether we’re even being honest about what that world looks like.

Because if I’m being real, when I look at the people in charge right now, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. It makes me feel like we’re drifting. Like decisions are being made somewhere far above us, by people who don’t feel the consequences of them the way we do.

And that’s the part that gets to me.

Not just that things feel off—but how much of it is out of my hands.

That’s a hard thing to sit with as a parent. You want to believe you can shape your kid’s future. You want to believe that if you work hard enough, care enough, pay attention enough, you can give them a good life.

But then you zoom out, and it feels like so much of that future is being decided by systems you don’t control, by leaders you didn’t choose, by momentum that doesn’t slow down just because you’re worried about it.

And yeah—there are days that feels terrifying.

So what do you do with that?

Because the obvious answer doesn’t really work. You can’t just unplug completely. You can’t pretend none of it matters. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t stick. If you care, you care. You’re going to think about it anyway.

But the opposite doesn’t work either.

You can’t consume everything. You can’t stay plugged into the outrage cycle all day and expect to function. That doesn’t make you informed—it makes you overwhelmed.

So I’ve been trying to find something in the middle.

Not ignorance. Not obsession. Something more intentional.

I’ve started to realize that “paying attention” doesn’t have to mean “paying attention to everything.”

It can mean choosing where your attention actually matters.

For me, that’s here.

Greenville

This place matters to me. It’s where I live. It’s where my son is growing up. It’s where my day-to-day life actually happens.

And when I look at it honestly, I can see both sides of it.

We’ve had stability here for a long time under Knox White. The city has grown. It’s cleaner, more active, more desirable than it used to be. That’s real, and it should be acknowledged.

But I also think it’s fair to ask what happens when anything stays the same for too long.

Not because it’s bad—but because nothing should be immune to change.

That’s not anger. That’s not partisanship. That’s just paying attention.

And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized something:

If I’m going to care about politics at all, it has to start locally.

Because that’s where I can actually do something.

Not scream into the void. Not argue with people online who aren’t listening. Not get pulled into national narratives that I have no real influence over.

But here?

I can show up. I can listen. I can talk to people. I can be part of something, even if it’s small.

That’s why I’ve been spending time in the SC forum, trying to understand more, trying to engage instead of just react.

I don’t know where it leads yet. I’m figuring that out as I go.

But it feels better than sitting back and assuming nothing can change.

And maybe that’s the shift.

Not “fixing the world.”

Not solving everything.

Just refusing to believe that you’re completely powerless.

Because I’m not.

And neither is anyone else, even if we’ve been conditioned to feel that way.

At the end of the day, I don’t need to control everything to be a good father.

I don’t need to solve national politics.

What I need to do is raise a kid who can think. Who can question things. Who isn’t afraid to engage with the world, even when it’s messy.

Who sees that his dad didn’t just check out.

That he paid attention—but not in a way that destroyed him.

That he cared—but also acted where it counted.

I don’t know what the world is going to look like when my son is my age.

Nobody does.

But I do know this:

He’s watching how I respond to it.

And that might matter more than anything I can’t control.