Rejuvenation

We have lost the power of rejuvenation, and things have gotten old very fast.

I wish to find a way through our time, which feels deeply stuck. The sorting is relentless—exhausting and exhilarating. We need new ways of thinking, but thinking begins with the words we use.

Words have always shaped cultural renewal. But our words feel worn out.

On the left: inclusiveness, pronouns, diversity—terms meant to bridge divides, now just as often marking them. The right has planted its flags: tradition, freedom, patriotism—no less rote, no less tired. Each side marshals its language in opposition to the other. These words no longer invite thought. They sort.

I don’t have an answer, only a suspicion: if we are to get unstuck, we may need to listen differently, speak differently. Maybe even reach for different words.

Today I want to reflect on an old word that might still have something to offer: rejuvenation.

The American Experiment

The American experiment has never unfolded in a single rhythm—it has always been a negotiation between tempos that do not move in sync.

The economy accelerates, channeling ambition into creation, innovation, and growth. Success is measured by speed, but easily becomes burnout.

Republican institutions deliberate and proceed with caution and constraint.

The two tempos are vital.

Progress emerges from their creative tension. Acceleration without deliberation burns out; deliberation without acceleration grinds to a halt.

‘We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy…’ Jefferson knew that the Constitution must move with the times. The coat must be refitted, the tempos recalibrated.

Do we still know how? The Constitution hasn’t been meaningfully amended since 1971. Certainly we haven’t achieved the ‘more perfect Union’. Are we done?

No. We are stuck in time.

Authoritarian Speed

Elections recycle the same choices. Nothing changes. We are trapped in an Eternal Recurrence that we refuse to break.

A time that cannot rejuvenate breeds resentment. When renewal feels impossible, nihilistic destruction becomes the easy outlet for frustration.

Chainsaws become political symbols.

When the stuck time of institutional reform is the issue, the speed of tyranny looks attractive. Executive orders move faster than thoughtful legislation.

Are some exhilarating in the speed while ignoring the resulting destruction?

The Art of Navigation

Rejuvenation is about learning to move through and across the dissonance of multiple tempos and rhythms.

Think of it as navigation.

Helmsmen do not force the wind; they adjust the sails. But in a storm, even the best navigator can lose their bearings.

There is no single trajectory through time, only the currents we must learn to move across and through. Yet not every current leads forward—some threaten to pull us under.

Disorientation is not automatically failure; it is necessary for rejuvenation.

Beyond ‘Healing’ and ‘Repentance’

The impulse to heal can be just another way of staying still.

To cast the past as an affliction is to lock oneself in the posture of repentance; it is to embrace victimhood.

The past makes up the sea we must sail.

Rejuvenation does not have atonement or healing as its end game; it seeks to renew our experience of time.

The Unfinished ‘We’

If democratic rejuvenation is possible, it will not come from a single vision imposed from above.

There is no national We ready to chart a course—only fragments, rhythms, and truncated conversations.

The Greeks called it kairos—a rupture in the smooth flow of time (kronos), a disorientation that is as much problem as opportunity.

Kairos does not guarantee renewal. It only unsettles what seemed measured and stable.

The question is not whether we can go back to an old coherence that never existed, but whether we can unstick our inertial time.

‘in order to form’

‘in order to form’ is a complex statement about time. The Union is not fully here. The We is not fully here. The People is not fully here.

The We, the Union, and the People are unfinished work—But this work is to be done by the We, by the Union, and by the People who do not yet fully exist.

The We, the People, the Union are not given, nor can they ever be perfected. They are constellations of motions and tempos, held together by the effort to move toward something not yet perfect and that can never be perfected.

Let’s repeat Jefferson: the man should not be forced to wear the boy’s coat. The Constitution is not an arc of the Covenant.

It is a contract with ourselves about our future. Like all contracts, it is an orchestration of time and motion.

‘in order to form’ is an ambition, a demand that time itself be shaped. This requires rejuvenation. Have we lost that power? I wish to play some role in bringing it back.

Where do we find ourselves?

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked this question (1844). It was a question meant to to bring clarity, to locate a ‘we’ in relation to its time and place.

Today the question itself is disorienting. The ‘we’ is not settled, and neither is the ‘where.’

Rejuvenation will not and cannot be the same experience for all of us.

A university teacher’s work of renewal will differ from that of a politician, an immigration attorney, a pastor, a judge, or a parent. A politician speaks to a broader public than a teacher, a pastor tends a larger flock than a parent, yet each moves within the rhythms and pressures of their particular where’s and when’s.

The possibility of collective projects is shaped by these scales of influence. The relevant ‘we’ depends on the relevant ‘where’.

Neither are fixed. They must be navigated.

We all navigate multiple where’s and when’s—some intimate, some expansive—each unfolding at its own tempo, each shaping what kind of ‘we’ and ‘me’ is possible.

Rejuvenation depends on recognizing the scope of our own reach and navigating from these we’s and where’s.

Emerson’s question, renewed for today, will not have a single, clear answer, not even for each one of us. What feels urgent in one domain may barely register in another.

Revaluation of Values

What comes next will not be decreed from above. It will be assembled from the everyday — from infinitely immediate and uneven where’s and we’s.

Rejuvenation will not come from a political savior who offers us clarity.

Our values need to be revalued. They will come from the everyday — from the day to day living of our lives in all their tempos and the values we deploy.

It will require navigating time in a new way. The infinity of our immediate nows adds up to a global change.

The long-term will emerge out of our infinite short-terms lived as rejuvenation.