Volume 5, Issue 79: What Is The What

"I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency."

The book is out. People tend to like it, I think. I hope you have bought your copy. If you have not, there is no time like the present: Buy now. If you have already bought the book, you are encouraged to leave it a review on Goodreads or Amazon, or both. It helps.

One of the strangest things about living in the South is how early in the year school starts. My children will be back in school on August 6, exactly one month from tomorrow, a date that’s actually four days later than they started last year. This surprises my friends who live on the East Coast, who don’t get going until Labor Day or even after, though I do tend to remind them that my kids have been out of school since before Memorial Day; for us, summer is already long past half over.

Their return to school feels particularly imminent in this household because the month of July is already so jam-packed. (This includes book tour events in Los Angeles on July 16 and Bethesda, Maryland on July 30, events should attend, and personally come by and say hi.) We have this upcoming week floating around a lake in South Carolina, then the trip to LA, then a baseball trip to St. Louis, then the trip to Washington, DC, and then next thing you know school is back in session and I’ve got to start the new book and football is happening again and we’re all back in the swing of it. I barely even noticed it was summer and now it’s almost over.

I was going over all this running around this week with my mother, who is training for her first half-marathon and thus particularly focused on structure and scheduling at the moment. She went over all the doctor’s appointments she and my father have, as well as a trip to Las Vegas for my father’s 76th birthday, several meetings she has as part of the local library board she’s a part of and an extended family reunion back in Illinois over Labor Day weekend she’s in charge of planning this year. “Whew,” she said. “There’s a lot of stuff.”

She sat down for a moment, shook her head and looked a little sad.

“You know, I always thought that when I retired, I’d be bored looking around for something to do,” she said. “But I think I’m busier now than when I was working. I don’t even remember now how I ever had time to have a full-time job. I guess this is just what it’s always going to be like.”

We sat in silence and thought about that for a second, but then I had to get going, I had a story due and I needed to pack for the lake trip and there’s that podcast I gotta tape and the boys have some paperwork we have to fill out and next thing you know it’s August and the next thing you know you’re retired and you haven’t slowed down a bit.

************

I bought a car this week. Actually, I bought my own car: I’d been leasing it, and the lease was almost up, and I decided that I like my car enough that I didn’t want to give it up. So I bought it. I take good care of my car, and it only has 44,000 miles on it; I bet it’s got another 100,000 more. But, time frame wise, I wasn’t thinking of the number of miles I had left. I was thinking of being an empty nester.

My older son William will graduate from high school in 2030, and my younger son Wynn will do so in 2032. (Juan Soto will still have seven years remaining on his Mets contract when Wynn, who just finished the fifth grade, goes to college.) When I sat down and did the calculations on the car, I realized that this is the car I will drive to both of their high school graduations. Will I want another car then? I’ll be in an entirely different phase of my life: There will be no kids in my house, no car pools, no breakfasts to be made, no rooms to pester them to clean, no exhausting lectures for them to ignore. That might be around the time I’ll be ready for a different car. That might be around the time I’ll be ready for a lot of different things. It’ll be so different then.

But will it? That’s the fallacy of aging, the one my mom fell into—the notion that there is always a corner up ahead, and once you turn it, you’ll be able to catch your breath. My parents surely thought, once my sister and I were out of the house, that their lives would relax a little bit, that they’d travel more, that they’d have all this free time to fill now that they didn’t have the daily madness of keeping kids alive and safe and functional to occupy their every waking minute. But it doesn’t seem like it turned out that way. There was always something to do. There was always an issue popping up. There were always enough things happening that, before you knew it, you looked up and the summer was half over. And then the year’s half over. And then half your life is.

I have friends whose children have all gone off to college, and I have friends who don’t have any children at all: Their lives don’t strike me as any less frenzied or exhausting than mine does. There is no hump to get over, no pivot moment in your life where things will get easier, or simpler, or more calm—particularly not in the current American environment, which seems to have been specifically constructed to make you feel as if your hair is perpetually on fire. There was something to deal with yesterday, there is something to deal with today, there will be something to deal with tomorrow. And it will happen over and over, and it will happen so quickly that one day you will sit down at your kitchen counter and realize that you forgot to slow down, you forgot to take it easy, you forgot to take a breath.

And this is the thing: That still strikes me as a life well-lived. To need, to be needed, to have obligations, to have so much happening in your life that it spins madly in a whirlwind around you, that is what living is. It’s being connected to other people, to the world you live in, so much so that you couldn’t unplug and go floating away by yourself even if you wanted to. There is no moment when it gets easier, when it gets simpler, when your calendar is suddenly free and open and clear. There is always something. You always are connected to something; something is always connected to you. To be busy, to be exhausted, to even be overwhelmed, this is a feature of life—this is how you know you are needed, that this you are a part of this world … that this world is, in fact, a part of you. My mom—me, you, all of us—has a busy, exhausting schedule not because she is missing out on what life is. She has it because she’s such a vivid part of it—she has it because she is living it. Life can sometimes feel like an endless to-do list. But it is a gift to have such things to do. I wouldn’t have it any other way. No matter what car I’m driving.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Sports Won’t Save You. And That’s OK, The Washington Post. Do not let your sports teams and organizations disappoint you, because they always will. I was happy with how this piece turned out, it is exactly what I was trying to say.

2. Jurassic Park Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Updated with Jurassic Park Rebirth.

3. Previewing July 2025, MLB.com. I’d do backflips if the Cardinals are, at the end of the month, the place they were at the beginning of the month.

4. Your Toughest MLB Ballot Decisions, MLB.com. (This vote is already over.)

5. This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. Season’s halfway over, folks.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, discussing “F1,” “M3gan 2.0” and “Heaven Can Wait.” We also have our look back at the best films of the first half of the year.

Morning Lineup, I did Thursday’s show.

Seeing Red, Bernie Miklasz and I had such a great time at our live event that we decided to keep the show going.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Despite It All, I’m Still Patriotic,” Mona Charen, The Bulwark. I felt every word of this.

America has also given the world jazz, hip-hop, standup comedy, Hollywood, community colleges, root beer, basketball, baseball, Broadway musicals, skyscrapers, public libraries, summer camp, and the ice cream cone. The United Nations is basically an American idea supported disproportionately over the years by American contributions. Ditto for the IMF and the World Bank. Until recently, Americans could be proud of our humanitarian work in the world’s poorest nations, to whom we were the most generous donor.

Over the years, the United States was the world’s foremost first responder when other nations were struck by tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, or aggression. In addition to the Marshall Plan, NATO, and PEPFAR, American might ensured that Berlin remained a free city when the Soviets imposed a blockade, supplied Israel with lifesaving munitions when Egypt and Syria launched a joint attack, defeated the aggressive Serbs and negotiated a Balkan peace, presided over the Camp David Accords, relieved a famine in Somalia, liberated Kuwait, saved the Yazidis from Mount Sinjar, and much else. Though we fought a brutal war against imperial Japan and suffered terrible war crimes at their hands, our occupation was benign and fair. We transformed an enemy into a thriving democratic ally.

Also, this Jonathan V. Last piece was chilling, ominous and, I suspect, prophetic.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“The General Specific,” Band of Horses. There are certain songs that make you feel like the world might just be all right. This song, which Band of Horses closed the show I saw them play this week at the Georgia Theater here in Athens, is absolutely one of them.

Just an all-timer of a band, a band that is very good for the soul when you need something good for the soul.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section. Let this drive your listening, not the algorithm!

Have a great weekend, all. Please be safe out there.

Best,
Will