"How to Smile at Strangers and Other Dangerous Acts of Treason"

One morning, I woke up and didn’t recognize the country outside my window.

It looked the same. The mail still came late. The sun still bruised the sky in that same tired orange. But something in the air was different, like the quiet before a storm that never ends. The people had changed. Or maybe I had. Or maybe we all had and no one wanted to say it out loud first.

The first thing I noticed was how strangers stopped making eye contact. Not just in the self-involved, headphones-in kind of way. This was different. It was fear-disguised-as-focus. Tension in the shoulders. Eyes darting just enough to scan for danger. And all I was doing was standing in line for coffee.

I smiled at the man in front of me as I reached for a lid. Nothing big. Just one of those shared, human moments, like "Hey, we’re both alive today, and isn’t that something?" But he looked at me like I’d just recited a manifesto. Like connection itself had become a threat.

I brushed it off. Until it kept happening. The glances. The flinches. The silence that swallowed rooms whole.

I started paying attention.

At the grocery store, a woman argued with the clerk about the price of eggs and somehow blamed immigrants.

At the gas station, a bumper sticker on the back of a truck read: If you're offended, I'll help you pack.

At the park, I overheard a father tell his kid that boys don’t cry and girls don’t marry girls and that’s just how God made it. The kid looked five. Like he still believed in superheroes.

And it hit me all at once: this wasn’t just discomfort. This was doctrine. This was a culture redefining itself in real time, while some of us still held onto the belief that being decent wasn’t up for debate.

The rules had changed.

Caring was controversial. Listening was liberal. Asking questions was an act of war.

And don’t even think about compassion—it’s a trap now. A slippery slope straight into the jaws of “woke ideology.”

I didn’t understand the new language. I didn’t know when truth became subjective. When being educated was elitist. When asking people what pronouns they use became an assault on the American family.

Fox News blared from living rooms like sacred scripture, teaching people to fear books, trans kids, immigrants, drag queens, empathy. A buffet of bogeymen, tailored for your outrage of choice. And we ate it up. Swallowed it whole. Washed it down with Facebook comment threads and thin blue line flags stapled to picket fences.

Fear sells better than hope. It always has. Hope asks something of you—faith, vulnerability, imagination. Fear only demands you harden. You brace. You close the door and build a wall. It’s simpler. It’s lazier. It doesn’t ask you to dream—just to survive.

And let’s be honest: no one’s really felt hopeful in a long time.

We’ve traded purpose for proximity. We scroll past suffering because the algorithm knows we can’t afford to care too deeply. It might cost us something. A friend. A job. Our place at the table. So we keep it shallow. We keep it safe.

And all the while, people like me stood there blinking, wondering if we’d missed a mass email.

Wasn’t this the country that claimed to care about liberty?

Wasn’t this the place that built itself on rebellion and refuge and the idea that all were created equal?

Apparently not. Not if you’re brown. Or queer. Or poor. Or too curious.

Because now, equality is a zero-sum game. And if someone else gets to breathe freely, someone else must be suffocating. That’s how we play it.

They say it’s about protecting kids, but they mean protecting them from knowledge, from nuance, from history that doesn't wrap itself in red, white, and sanitized exceptionalism.

They say it’s about free speech, but what they mean is their speech. The kind that gets to mock, exclude, erase—but not be challenged.

They say it’s about God, but what they worship is control.

I started to feel it in my body. Like my skin no longer fit right. Like my voice had too many disclaimers attached. I asked myself questions I never thought I’d ask. Was it safe to put that sticker on my laptop? Was it worth it to bring that book to the waiting room? Should I say something when I hear that comment—or is it better to just get through the day?

This isn’t just grief—it’s erosion. Of trust. Of space. Of what we once allowed each other to be. It’s waking up in a society that makes you second-guess your own instincts. That convinces you survival depends on silence.

And so I silenced myself. Slowly. Unwillingly. I stopped correcting people when they misgendered someone. I didn’t post the article I wanted to share. I hesitated before speaking up in meetings. And every time, I told myself it was just this once. That it wasn’t worth the fight.

But the silence stacked up. Became a wall.

I watched the people I love become... sharper. Not more certain—just more afraid. Of losing ground. Of being wrong. Of not being on the right side of some invisible line. And fear? It’s contagious. It spreads like mold—quiet, until it rots everything.

I found myself trying to make sense of it all in conversations with myself I was too afraid to have out loud. Was this still the same country that sent people to the moon? That marched for civil rights? That believed in justice, even when it was inconvenient?

Or had we traded all of that in for comfort and power?

It doesn’t happen all at once. That’s the insidious part. No one wakes up evil. They wake up afraid. And when someone offers them a target for that fear—a scapegoat, a villain, a convenient other—they take it. They take it because it’s easier than facing the complexity inside themselves.

And the targets? They’re always the same. The ones who live on the margins. The ones whose very existence is seen as protest. The queer kid who just wants to play soccer. The immigrant family trying to survive. The teacher who dares to say slavery was real. The artist who paints with too many colors.

I grieve for them. And I grieve for what we’ve lost trying to erase them.

I grieve the conversations that never happen because people are too dug in. I grieve the family dinners where silence replaces connection. I grieve the friendships that dissolved when I said I believed Black lives mattered. When I wore a mask. When I spoke up.

I grieve for every kid who is learning that difference is dangerous. That love comes with disclaimers. That being yourself might mean being alone.

And I grieve for me. For how small I’ve started to make myself. How quiet. How careful.

I used to feel pride in being American. I used to believe the story. That we were messy, but striving. Broken, but building.

Now I feel like I’m living in someone else’s mythology. A place where freedom is just a brand, and justice is up for auction.

And still—still—I smile at strangers.

Not because I think it’ll fix things. But because I refuse to forget what it felt like when we trusted each other. Because I want to believe there’s someone else out there scanning the room, hoping to find a face that still remembers how to be human.

So I smile. And sometimes, someone smiles back. And for a flicker of a second, I remember the smell of home. And I wonder if maybe, just maybe, we can still build it again.

But we won’t build it through fear. Or blame. Or the seductive high of outrage. We’ll build it when we start asking better questions. When we sit in the discomfort of being wrong. When we dare to admit we’ve hurt people and choose to try again.

We’ll build it in classrooms where every kid sees themselves in the story. In churches that choose love over judgment. In workplaces where everyone’s voice matters. In coffee shops where strangers still look up and say hello.

We’ll build it quietly. Relationally. One conversation at a time. One act of defiance wrapped in kindness. One refusal to be numb.And maybe it won’t look like the country we grew up in. Maybe it’ll be something braver. Something true. Something worth being proud of—not because it’s perfect, but because it chooses, again and again, to remember the better angels of its nature.

So I’ll keep smiling. I’ll keep hoping. I’ll keep holding the thread.

Because if grace is treason, then let me be guilty. Because if kindness is rebellion, then I choose to revolt. Because if love is a radical act—then let it be the hill I die on.