David McElroy

By the standards of my younger self, I’ll always be a failure. And that’s fine with me.

Our culture is obsessed with riches and status. We unconsciously judge people according to their level of success. We’re envious of those who get ahead and those who have more than we do. We judge others harshly — sometimes loudly and sometimes silently — for not living up to their “potential.”

I grew up this way. Maybe you did, too. I wanted success and power and money. I saw those things as the path to status and freedom. And I expected myself to be very successful.

But something happened along the way. I learned there was a tradeoff between worldly success and personal satisfaction with life. I learned that I couldn’t “have it all.” I struggled for years to find a compromise between the two — to see a way to follow incompatible values. And I failed.

When I crashed, I crashed hard, like a train jumping off its tracks. I went off the rails about 15 years ago — metaphorically speaking — and refused to move until I could figure out what had gone so terribly wrong. Why I felt like a failure.

I finally discovered that my culture had lied to me.

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As the November elections get closer, I feel as though I’m living in a place waiting to get slammed by a destructive hurricane.

Anxious and angry people all around me are preparing for the onslaught of pent-up political energy. Most people fall into one of two camps. Those in one group are eager to stick it to a politician they hate. Those of the other group hate that first group.

All of them are completely sure that the bigger evil is on the other side.

I’m one of the few who is only mildly interested in the approaching hurricane — because I know it won’t matter which side wins. Not in the long run.

I say this as a political expert, but not the kind of “expert” who gets quoted on television or in newspaper stories. It’s true that I worked for 20 years as a political consultant, so I could give you a pretty realistic analysis of what’s going to happen in the congressional elections in about six weeks.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not going to tell you who’s going to win or how it’s going to affect U.S. politics between now and the 2028 presidential campaign. I’m going to predict something far more certain.

Nothing that happens in the November elections will fix the world around us, no matter what happens.

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As I locked the door of my office to drive home Monday, the parking lot was deserted and quiet. It was only 7 p.m., but the last light of sunset was almost completely gone.

Something in the air felt different tonight.

It was getting dark a little bit earlier. I noticed flashes of lightning in the distance. And then it hit me. There’s always a moment in the early autumn when the air feels different and I know change is almost here.

Autumn is coming. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. I feel it.

For years, this annual moment has been evidence that nature’s wheel is still turning, just as it always has. The wheel has oriented us for months to the growth and the green of summer and it’s about to push us to the beautiful harvest time — a time of reds and golds and browns — that comes just before nature goes dormant until time for another rebirth.

This almost imperceptible feeling in the air always gives me comfort. It reassures me that everything that’s happened for many millennia before I was born is still happening.

As I’ve gotten older, it’s also felt like evidence that nature is marking off another year for me — claiming just a bit more of the life I was granted when I was born many years ago.

Nothing about this felt frightening. Everything felt normal. Everything was as it should be. I was where I should be. Something much larger than me was in control.

Despite all of man’s efforts to control nature — to control our environment — nature was still in control. The return of this feeling lets me know once again that the God of nature is still supreme.

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