Carter Gaddis, Writer & Editor

The sense of dread is always there. It’s this feeling that a monster lurks outside the door, ready to smother our humanity at the appointed hour.

It’s October 25, 2024. The innate optimism that underpins life in America endures, but it feels fragile.

I sit in my home at this moment in sublime isolation, the rays of the morning sun slanting in from our East-facing rear window, a mug of warm Keurig Starbucks inches away, one of my cats lolling near the window on her elevated carpet condo soaking up the Central Florida sunlight. My wife just went up the stairs to begin her workday. My younger son is at school up the road, and my older son is probably fast asleep in his dorm room a 25-minute drive away at the University of South Florida. Everything looks and sounds calm.

The TV is off. The dishwasher quietly whirs and hums and clicks in the kitchen. The ceiling fan stirs the interior air and dew shines on the blades of St. Augustine sod in my backyard. The room is comfortably cluttered, floor and tabletops strewn with the remnants of my younger son’s restless late-night snacking and a week’s worth of neglected housekeeping.

Nothing I see, hear, smell or touch this morning hints at the sense of dread that is always there. Rather, the knowledge of our national rift produces thoughts of how bad things could get in the coming years, of how fragile this centuries-old societal experiment really is. These thoughts darken my mood as they intrude on a bright, sunny autumn morning.

The monster is out there right now on the front lawn, casually leaning against our oak tree, lurking like a great wooly demon, waiting for the final command. Even as I take a sip from my mug, the dread monster checks its phone to make sure it didn’t miss the signal. But no, that signal won’t come for at least a few more days, during which the sense of dread will build to a crescendo while the monster’s master rolls through the land and over our bruised collective consciousness, seeding the ground for a harvest of chaos.

We’re going to vote today, me, my wife and my older son. It’s his first election. We harbor no illusions that our three votes will shift the balance toward the light in this benighted state. Our preferred candidate won’t win Florida. We know this because this state was long ago taken over by those who feed on the dread and misery of others. Still, we will vote and we will hope. We’ll try to persuade others in our circles to lock arms against the monster.

Truth is our sword, optimism our shield. These are the tools we’ll use to push back against the dread, to keep chaos at bay.

What else is there? I could quote Obama or Gandhi or Lincoln. I could “look on the bright side,” acknowledge the progress we’ve made over the centuries, think about what it must have been like to live in the United States in 1860 or 1941 or 1963. Surely, the people of those times and from millennia before lived with this same sense of dread, this constant awareness that impending doom stood menacingly on the front lawn.

Everything is doomed, of course. That’s not a sad statement. We cherish what we have now because we know it will end. That’s what it means to be alive, to be human, to let compassion and empathy wash over you like a cool breeze in a parched and earth-cracked desert. What keeps us going? Optimism.

So, here we are. The monster lurks, and its moment approaches. Let it wait. Let it marinate in its digestive stew of rancor and cruel intentions. We’ll be here when it’s time to fight.

They’ll find me inside with the morning sun on my face, my cat secure in her aloof dignity and impervious to dread, my family nearby and safe, my mug growing tepid, my mind racing, my heart consoled by the truth and my shield of occasionally wavering optimism that holds firm, still.