Many friends are sad. Me too. A weariness seeps into our reckonings. Every day bad news. Every day omens and groans like the chorus of a Greek tragedy. How to cope? Where to locate hope?

That this too shall pass is a truism but will it before we do? Must we end our lives with this noxious cloud in our brains after each dawn’s headlines? It will take years to rid poor Los Angeles of the stench of fire. Ditto our polity from the stench of turpitude. This can’t be us, we insist, the U.S.! But us it is. I cannot divorce my nation: my history, memories, grandchildren, language are here. “Men must endure their going out as their coming hither.” What’s my responsibility – to my world, neighbors, self? Make peace or wage war? If either, how?

For many, such questions are novel. Americans my age grew up comfortably encased in confident assumptions. We may have debated the path forward but not who, as a people, we were. Crime occurred – but it was random. We did not cringe under a collective threat.

Now I wait for a knock at my door. Each day jackboots closer.

Maybe I should shut up. Many communicators are truckling to the Nameless One. Shame on them, yet I understand. I’ve managed publications. Do you risk all to enforce a principle – or “live to fight another day”? This calculus, so easy from the sidelines, may excruciate in the arena.

Age and anonymity free me to speak my mind. If they come for me, what have I got to lose – a few years of increasing decrepitude? I cling to life – but if I can spend what’s left of mine opposing Evil, is that so terrible?

Emergencies pare life of inessentials. From a burning house we rescue what’s most precious. We take the dog and forsake Grandma’s porcelain (or, God forbid, the reverse).

My essentials are the few I love, time, and truth.

I will do all I can, however little, to protect the few my heart holds dear. We cannot love hundreds, only a handful. This may mean slamming my door on legions of the distraught. I cannot help it: to live is to choose.

More and more eagerly I swat away time-sucks. Infinite the inventory of things I’d like to accomplish: no bucket can contain my bucket-list. The pleasant, though, must give way to the pressing, the pressing to the most pressing. If you and I are spending time together, it’s because I feel I must. Even napping or goofing off, I’m restoring my strength for the fray. This may be baloney, only it’s baloney I believe in, therefore my creed.

Truth, glamorous from afar, proves an iffy goddess nearer in. Which truth – and how to present it? Which information matters most? I find myself deleting voices that might have delighted in a gentler hour. With the ship sinking, I don’t want to hear about your childhood, thanks, save it for later.

Write your heart out – that’s my order to myself – and trust your heart to decide what that means. It does not mean bludgeoning you with moans, for then you’ll defect, and my heart’s intent on keeping you close. If I could, I’d clown – how I envy David Letterman! – but I’ve no gift for funny. I must try to ingratiate with earnestness, be serious but not tedious.

That’s my coping strategy – today’s version, which tomorrow may revise. In an hour of peril, it’s OK to be bewildered, sad, unsettled – inevitable, perhaps. To serve others, we must save ourselves, not always easy in the midst of woe.