The images are almost as indelible as the sounds.

Wisps of an anthem when I was 11, with simply worded yet complex images of a world I longed to see.

A badass rocking video on MTV in my brother’s room in the basement with four stars who seemed shockingly new yet archetypal as if always lodged in memory. Plus! Lara Croft and special effects making the stars into superheroes.

A mix CD where the words, “see the Bedouin fires at night,” took me far beyond a winter’s night in the South Shore Plaza parking lot.

A soaring patriotism and tribute that gave a newly complex world a sense of peace amid chaos and war peeking in. Meaning.

Framing

The names hanging in tribute as the hero team from down the street, the underdogs that somehow also represented my triumph, all of our triumph, won.

That strumming guitar as the names soared to the sound of endless, hard-earned optimism, and then defiantly

in the face of those who tear at us

that wing of a flag.

All That You Can’t Leave Behind showed me that music could be so much more than MTV, Bar Mitzvah and Wedding playlists, FM radio, or even that catchy single or band you really enjoyed and thought was your favorite. Music as emotional transference and then, transcendence.

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb with that pulsating earworm of a lead single – Vertigo beaming at us in silhouettes on iPod commercials as technology and music warped forever. Scouring the Times Square Virgin Megastore to buy my first album.

SItting in a car on an overcast day, between the water and the grassy campsite of a state park at the far tip of Newport RI, at a Boy Scout camp out. While younger Scouts were busy learning knots, I was learning what seemed like the interminably ancient beauty of The Joshua Tree.

U2 3D in IMax at the New England Aquarium and its immersive concert is a plunge into the back catalog. Buying concert DVDs! An array of music in front of me of emotion and sonic adventure.

When you discover and fall in love with a band 32 years after it was founded, listening is exploration down welcoming hallways with adventure drawing you forward.

Music becomes more of a soundtrack at this point.

Those concert DVDs constantly accompanying writing marathons in college, taking me through the emotional ride of a live show but with the comfort that makes it work in background noise that summons high spirits. Everything in college seemed possible with my passion and intelligence encouraged to excel.

The lush and emotional highs and lows of the live recording of The Fly, recorded in Boston in 2001. The song is normally a lush piece of electronica on the album and live, slightly distorted, yet still recognizably U2. But this recording, a thruming rock note that swings into a reoccurring chorus that smashes into an interplay between Bono and the drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., in a way where the band’s visual livewire energy running through the stage is heard. Pain and soaring joy amid the whole breadth of life in just one song. A song that was there for me in triumph, there to lift me up out of heartbreak.

Driving through sunny New Hampshire hills to the tune of One Tree Hill, summer spread ahead as I returned to my childhood summer camp, now as a counselor. Returning to right a long past mistake and finish my time properly in that little slide of heaven.

The soundtrack of a life where there really are no limits, no line.

No Line on the Horizon was not just an anthem, or an album, but the sound of the world opening up in all the ways I had dreamed it would. The album, and its title track, came out in 2009, right before I went to study in Argentina for five months. Travelling internationally and experiencing something new, with adventure along the way, was the dream as long as I could remember. Click on the link at the top of this paragraph, listen to the song. Its the sound of limitless potential, dreams achieved, with more dreams to reach ahead.

At this point music isn’t just an accompaniment but a philosophy, a spirituality, and when it surfaces without my playing – an old friend.

And here – a karaoke legend is born.

Picture it

A trendy bar, at the corner of two cobblestone streets, in an old and charming neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Hookah, Stella Artois by the liter (water to them, manna to 20 year old Americans), my naively egotistical assumed familiarity with the owner which was born out of a sense of UMass rules applying everywhere, a beautiful house singer with her hip band most nights. But, not tonight. Karaoke tonight.

A desire by 20 year old me to give anything a shot and impress the women I was with.

One song I felt would rock the crowd and I was comfortable with the lyrics.

Uno

Dos

Tres

Catorce?

The folly of counting out of order in Spanish in a Spanish speaking country is as obvious as how perfect the choice of song was. A legend was born in a place called Vertigo.

The best karaoke is when you know all the lyrics and feel free to unleash your inner rock-star with zero shame. It was the night I learned that really, life is so much better when you don’t take yourself seriously.

I didn’t even need the lyrics, I worked the stage, then the whole bar, when Bono sings, “How to kneeeeeel”, I, of course, knelt.

The soft parts of the song where the singing takes command, I approached friends of mine and sang directly to them. I completely lost myself in the joy of the music and the crowd and feeling no inhibitions yet a total sense of control.

The crowd, and more importantly to me – those I was with, loved it. But more importantly, I learned how beautiful it can be to simply, in a perfect moment, to not give a fuck.

A few months later, I was with Argentine and American friends, on a service trip, to a poor Argentine village with a long past Jewish heritage that dangled close to my own family’s story.

We were there to work with local children and launch a long-term partnership between the Hillel of Buenos Aires and the village’s school. It was my first exposure to international development and the good that I could do in the world through commitment and an understanding of my capacity to serve others.

The surroundings and circumstances were tough. The impact we would make for these children may ultimately be minor in the face of the massive challenges they faced. But, if we could do even a tiny bit of good, change at least one life by a little bit, it would be worth it.

The camaraderie we built that weekend, between Argentinians and Americans was more lasting than I could realize. We were united not really by our faith, but by our humble sense of service to others we barely even knew and a desire to confront inequality.

At one moment, that beautiful kind of synchronicity broke out when one person started singing a song that just felt right and all joined in, somehow all feeling comfortable with the lyrics. Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out of – now a song that I realize, writing now ten years later, feels right for the persistence we all hoped we may be able to seed in the moment with our modest work. A song of hope that hit across borders, both personal and global.

The music we love, if we’re lucky, evolves with us and we grow through it. We dig in and rediscover the nuances of a live performance that changes from year to year, we cycle in an out of favorites depending on where we are in our lives.

The music continued to peek at me from music videos during an idyllic afternoon cooking with new friends and also underscored bonding with my mother and brother over the pure emotion of long awaited live shows.

If a band keeps doing its job, you can discover the entirety of emotion and experience in the band’s discography. U2 gives that gift if you let them in.

And now?

I work to make the world a better place, through international development work and advocacy, in a role only a degree or two removed from where Bono crusades for global justice and against inequality.

More importantly – I dance with no inhibitions with my fiance in my apartment to U2’s newest poppy tribute, a song that celebrates US and NYC in its video, but more importantly its about that warmest and longest of feelings

Love.

I was either 26 or 27 when I first learned what the Nakba was. Do you know what Nakba means? It translates literally as disaster, catastrophe, or cataclysm. The word feels like a gash. It is the Palestinian name for the period during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948.

I work on refugee issues in my job and have learned about what defines and causes refugees. The idea of losing home, safety, any sense of stability also feels terrifyingly understandable now that I live an independent life and have to provide for myself. Refugees don’t just happen – there has to be something that they are seeking refuge from.

Now, can you imagine leaving your home, your life, willingly?

I am angry that I was brainwashed because I was pretty much taught that Israel could do no wrong. I appreciate that I learned that Israel is vital for the world, for Jews, for me.

It is vital, but when one lets go of tribalism, it is very clear that Israel is capable of doing plenty wrong. It ultimately is a nation, like any other, and while I am proud to be Jewish and consider its moral teachings a light to the world, a Jew is is by nature no better nor worse than any other human even if preschool at the Jewish Community Center, 9 years of Jewish summer camp, and 12 years of Hebrew school may have led me to believe differently.

The same political and moral laws that apply to all nations, all leaders, must apply to a Jewish nation and Jewish leaders. Benjamin Netanyahu is not exceptional just because of what he does as leader of Israel.

I do not despise nor pity everyday people who defend him for any which reason because I too did not know nor think I had to know what al-Nakba means until I was physically in a place to know.

My Jewish education began so early and was always intertwined with Pride in Israel and the moral imperative to Never Forget that teachings from the Torah, the magnitude of the Holocaust, and love of Israel and knowledge of its history all resemble inherited myth, more than philosophy or history. They are inexorably intertwined with my development at its most formative.

But we grow.

Our identities become so much more than what they were at our start.

I remember, not sure how early, when I was told in Hebrew School that Palestinians voluntarily left their homes in the land that is now Israel because the surrounding Arab nations told the Palestinians that they had to leave in order for the Palestinian civilians to not be caught in the war about to be waged on a nascent Israel in which many Jews would assuredly be killed so soon after the Holocaust.

I was also taught that Tel Aviv was a Jewish Shangri-La on the beach, rising out of desert and surf. A huddle of Jewish pioneers breaking ground with nothing around.

On and on and on.

Later, I learned that many Palestinians were forced away or scared away from home due to armed Jewish militias.

Tel Aviv’s founding photo was creatively taken (or described) so that the ancient city of Jaffa – of which Tel Aviv was a suburb which would gobble up the Arab city – was hidden from view.

Foreign policy, conflict, and the status of refugees are complex things. Just like Jews are a people like any other, there have and always will be Jews who are good people and Jews who are bad people. To claim Israel’s founding was not without sin or that it was absolutely justifiable, disregards the influence of propaganda and ignores the desperation and possibly terrible acts of a people escaping and emerging from deep trauma.

What is the ultimate difference between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Irgun, a former Jewish paramilitary group, now lionized for their role in Israel’s founding, but who bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 and massacred innocent Palestinian villages in several occurrences. The PLO high-jacked planes and carried out bombings. Both transformed into accepted political organizations.

If all acts can be explained by a Jew as self-defense, does that label a whole people as enemies? Does it force one to believe in the infallibility of men long past because they share ancient genetic or cultural ties?

With that established, it is vital to recognize that conflict happens and eventually ends. To reject Israel as an idea or deny its current right to exist – denies reality. Israel does exist and for that, I am grateful.

Gratitude needs to be accompanied by responsibility. If Israel is my “birthright”, as declared in ancient biblical text and the Israeli Declaration of Independence – I have a choice. I can accept or reject my birthright and a responsibility for it.

I grew up during the era of the Oslo Accords, a peace agreement that led to something that truly approached peace between Jews and Palestinians. It embraced coexistence fostered by an underlying optimism and benevolent view of two states and the lives they shape.

I only understood Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO, as a statesman and Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, was a Lincoln to David Ben-Gurion’s Washington. Then Rabin was a Lincoln.

And then there was that afternoon in Hebrew School when the Rabbi, the Principal, and my teacher all gathered around a blurry TV. I remember myself as the only young person in the room. A wave of suicide terrorist bombings were gashing through Israel. People I was raised to think of as distant family were dying.

The Second Intifada – Jews were dying again.

My Jewish maturation and global education have both continued since then – every now and then in concert. I learned from other distant family in Argentina why a refuge from violence and persecution, a homeland, is still needed.

I traveled to Israel three times, twice under the forced fog of propagandist programming. I crossed into Palestine and walked through a refugee camp.

I learned and I dug in deeper, in a critical manner, and became even more tied to the unique history that has gifted me the opportunity to become who I am.

And now?

I accept my birthright, but not because I am Jewish but because I was taught Jewish values such as Tikkun Olam – repairing the world – by the same stories that now tear my heart over Israel.

I do not know the experience of living through the Second Intifada firsthand and having people I know die in a coffee shop or on a bus. Nor do I know the experience of growing up in refugee limbo, with no nation caring about me or my family. However, I do know what it is like to have a story of deep and recent loss as part of my heritage.

As Israel transforms, or not, with the reelection of an indicted man who would partner with racist religious extremists because “politics” and who continues to lead a government that supports a de facto annexation of the West Bank – I choose to accept my given responsibility.

I grew up with Israel and a sense of pride and belonging to it. Its what American Jews experience for the most part. And now, between the pain of loss with letting Israel go or disappointment in Israel’s actions, with the possibility of another day always tomorrow – I will always choose the possibility promised by tomorrow.

At the end of the Passover Seder, we proclaim, “Next Year in Jerusalem” – an optimistic ode to a better world escaped from bondage. In Deuteronomy, it is stated, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.” No matter the darkness, both of these phrases call us to keep faith in our ability to work towards and demand a better home and world.

On this cold night with some snow on the ground, I need to understand why I’m here. A little dose of civic religion helps me center my ambitions and there’s no better place for me to tap this well than the FDR Memorial at night.

20 years ago was the first time I learned about a President other than Washington, Lincoln, JFK, HW Bush, or Clinton. And by learn, I mean more than just a name, but to be honest, as I reflect now, these may have been the only names. Men of myth for having ascended into our pantheon as deity or martyr or in the case of the all too human Bush and Clinton – looming large in the worldview of a child the way that public figures usually do.

In 1998, fourth grade, I was assigned to make a timeline of a person, I think. I forget the exact parameters.

What I do remember was pulling the book out of a bookshelf. Bronze bordered with a photo of his beaming face out of a car, in front of a crowd. Titled just “FDR” – I think.

A new era of American history opened and standing astride it, he was like a superhero colossus of real life. As a young Jew who loved Indiana Jones movies – here was the real man who beat the Nazis.

The country was failing and people were hungry and homeless and HE provided for them.

I think that this was my first awareness that someone could become paralyzed, yet that didn’t diminish him one bit. The concept of losing such a core ability and learning its loss didn’t hold one back one bit.

And above all else, he was just a man. Not a myth, deity, martyr, but a hero nonetheless. As a ten year old steeped in movie heroes – the idea of a real person as a real hero was nearly transcendent. There was definitely internal mythologizing involved but at that moment, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was locked in as the meter and benchmark.

The FDR Memorial is ironically quiet for a grand man as The Lincoln Memorial is ultra-grand for a magnificent but quiet man. The memorial sprawls across walls, reliefs, bronze sculptures, and waterfalls that start orderly and then cascade in a beautiful manner as WWII strikes and a new more confusing world is born. Quotes are spread throughout, touching at an an optimistic yet aware sense of the American soul, and braille is spread throughout, with a mind towards inclusiveness. I came tonight after a constant but light and pleasant snow. It graced the temples of sculptures and crunched underfoot.

I became a Democrat early on.

Maybe it was because Bill Clinton was President as I grew up. Maybe it was because I was raised to be compassionate. Or maybe my curiosity about the world was encouraged at a young age and a faith in coexistence became permanent. It could be growing up in a perfect little slice of suburbia in that cradle of liberalism and revolution – Massachusetts. Whatever it was – FDR came at the right time to be my North Star.

Care for the poor, enemy to tyrants, champion of the world to be United.

Do good in the world, lead when you can, trust your community, stand up to tyrannic evil, be optimistic and of high spirits, never stop seeking for new solutions. Those are the lessons imparted to us by FDR. Or maybe just to me. Nevertheless, for the past 20 years, this has been the heart of what guides me.

The cold gives me a slightly delusional giddy feeling. Like I said, the snow is crunching underfoot. At night, perfectly aimed lights illuminate the memorial’s emotional high points. It is laid out to tell the story for his Presidency, the fourish terms, from the Great Depression through the New Deal to World War II to his legacy – but more importantly – his wife Eleanor Roosevelt leading his legacy, the UN. I’m alone tonight and wander through and speak out loud. To history? To ghosts? To him?

After wandering through a grove of pillars, covered by abstract reliefs depicting the breadth of the New Deal’s impact, and in braille, I come to a larger than life sculpture of him, in a cape, with his dog Fala.

If you’re “in politics” and not an eager student of history, you’re approaching things wrong. I pursued my own narrative of engagement and agenda of change – interning on an ill-fated Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign, jumping on the ballot myself in achievement and (at then) heartbreaking loss in student government. Early on, to be honest, I’m not sure what first inspired the first step to start doing things but it just seemed natural. But now, with the benefit of reflection, its obvious that the boy who wanted to be a superhero when he grew up found one in politics and that politics was the way to do good, as he did.

But of course, neither part is that simple.

I worked my butt off in some student government offices with persistence and accessibility, only to then lose office in popularity contests. I doggedly pursued later races and then squandered opportunities to make change – treating the win, not the job, as the goal.

My self-imposed ideas of “moderation” ran up against the, I assume, sincerely held beliefs and actions of those more radical. And I learned the realness, not the dusty history of events, of our nation’s sins as I learned to respond and the reasons behind the views of others. Misfortune was not something that just happened, it happened because of the world our country makes or doesn’t make. History was not just knowing what happened, the archetypal narrative, but the how and why.

Truman received my admiration by proxy and that the same time my horror at US action in Latin America during the Cold War pushed me towards international development as a remedy and course of action. Yet, I argued in defense of the dropping of the Atomic Bomb in a college freshman course. Looking back now, I know I spoke with the naive confidence of a fortunate one. FDR receded in favor of the present. College Democrats and Obama and the relentless drive towards my future and an opening world and the thrill of shaping my course all took the lead in guiding my politics.

Two women, bundled up and speaking Spanish round the corner at the Memorial. They’re as surprised as I am to see anyone at night in this cold but then they ask me to take their picture. They love Fala. In my reflective state, I’m looking to have a conversation but they’re hesitant. I forget exactly but when we begin moving in and out of Spainglish, we all loosen up.

They live in Miami and are originally from Mexico and Nicaragua if I recall correctly. They don’t know who FDR is and I share a brief history lesson of an admirer and appreciate their attentiveness. We share this ground and memorial, whether due to hero worship or Fala’s timeless charms. We’re all American after all.

Politics is hard. And not in the “politics ain’t beanbag kind of way” but when you first choose it as a career – it doesn’t pay, doesn’t have sympathy for you, doesn’t have natural entry points, isn’t consistent, and doesn’t care about your passion and crazy ambition. It privileges the privileged and the privileged can often better afford to pay their dues. Yet, the world isn’t fair or just either but through it all, an animating vision can keep you moving day by day until you can reach a plateau of comfort. Plus, it’s also messy.

I don’t know when I first learned about Japanese Internment or FDR’s lack of pressing concern for the Holocaust but it happened. A man who built all of his image on an idea of compassion for his fellow man only extended that compassion at times to his fellow American – narrowly defined, and the world – broadly defined.

Pilgrimage may be a heavy word for it but when I made a pilgrimage to Hyde Park in the Hudson Valley – the site of his home, Presidential Library, and grave – the cardboard hero of history from the fourth grade became deeper and more.

He was a hoarder, at least in a sense. His Hyde Park home is covered with the accumulated knick-nacks of a wealthy man, spoiled in his youth, but curiosity encouraged. Model boats, childhood mementos, paintings, cover every bit of space. He’s also immensely afraid of fire due to his paralysis and fixtures throughout his house depict his precautions. The scale of the property drives home how wealthy he was but walking through these fields and woods on a perfect summer day, visiting his and Eleanor’s grave, its a communing with history.

It was my last summer before I moved to Washington DC to attend my dream graduate school in foreign policy and the opportunity to act on my values in a real way had never felt so possible. And at this moment, FDR was a real person, not a legend. And real people deserve scrutiny in the same manner we must always self-scrutinize on why we believe what we believe, and why we do what we do, and why we believe in what we do and do what we believe.

When FDR becomes a man, Eleanor rises to a higher level. With added depth comes an increased understanding of history and her moral leadership, sacrifices, their partnership, all become essential in understanding how he could do what he did. The times he didn’t heed her counsel also become starker.

It is still hard for me to fully expunge my disbelief at the cowardly, racist, and dictatorially unconstitutional act of imprisoning Japanese Americans. The more and more I read about FDR’s management style and interpersonal relations, its kind of clear that he could be an obtuse and withholding jackass. And of course, he cheated on Eleanor over and over.

He acted on the privilege he grew up with and without the humbling of his paralysis and his partnership with Eleanor – he may have lived his life as a dilettante. His character flaws and sins show who he almost was but yet, his story turned otherwise. He was sincerely and fully committed, with all ounce of his being and measure of his talent – to the point of dying for the country. He carried the Great Depression and World War II and the country’s hopes and pain on his shoulders.

Here I am at the end of the Memorial, where in warmer months the chaotic waterfall flies of stones, letting loose tremendous energy in a free spring. Earlier in the memorial, the waterfalls, meant to evoke the Hudson Valley, are more orderly but as you progress through the narrative of his Presidency – the waterfalls loosen up more and more. Also at the end, a statue of Eleanor stands, lit up and lifelike in an alcove, with text honoring her founding leadership with the UN and human rights. Quotes line the walls with the Four Freedoms, declared by FDR, as those that people everywhere in the world ought to enjoy, overlooking all.

Freedom of Speech

Freedom of Worship

Freedom from Want

Freedom from Fear

On my way out, a crowd of school children are coming in. They all pause to take photos with a statue of the President, just to the right of the entrances. Its life-size, human, him in his wheelchair and appearing even smaller due to its remove from the grander trappings in the rest of the memorial.

Those of us with unlimited belief in our potential should do well to view great lives tied above all to the service of others. An understanding of each of our fragility shows you the virtue of seeking solutions above all else, simply put – you have to try because what else is there. We’re ultimately human, but with the guidance of loved ones, an at least base understanding of our morals, welcoming the future with possibility, and a persistent faith in oneself and one’s abilities – maybe each of our actions may echo in history.

That man, that grand man, that spoiled rotten yet compassionate person, that warrior for universal freedoms who betrayed them for his fellow Americans, that voice for an optimistic belief in a shared better future for all – maybe lessons on how to live and not to live, how to lead and care, are the main thing we can expect from someone who was ultimately a human.