No sovereign nation gives up their independence without taking up arms. I fear the discussion of making Canada a state, because I see Canada almost every day – the view from my office window in downtown also includes a Great Lake, a river, and the bustling communities on either side of the border. They bustle because artillery does not rain down, the conditions are sufficiently stable and predictable to make creating businesses and families. You cannot overvalue peace.

It was a beautiful day on Friday. The desire to make dinner completely left me, and I pulled out my nicest bike and headed to the lake. I wore a tank top and shorts, dodging the broken glass on the industrial road that leads me to the Outer Harbor. I pursued the water craving a sense of eternity. We have break walls between us and the horizon. I can see Canada on the northern edge. Still. The sun stood higher than it had at that hour for the last six months, hazy but bright. The lake was still frozen. At one point, a bald eagle flew over me as I watched some men walk out to an ice-fishing hut. It didn’t matter that half of Buffalo had the same idea I did; I was overcome with a sense of peace.

We live as an interdependent web. This is a tenet of my faith as a Unitarian Universalist and also a reality of my life. Everything in my home came because of some sort of collaboration with other people. A lot of it is economic: I exchanged money with people who had food, with people who had clothes, with people who had construction materials because I needed them and they had it. They use my money to acquire what they need. I receive money because I am able to work on an issue that matters enough to society that we pay some people to take care of it. Some of it is love: raising my children, helping my friends, enjoying the companionship of people around me. People are meaning-makers and connection-seekers, at least a lot of us are.

A stronger thread in a web is not necessarily better connected – if it pulls with too much force on the thinner threads, the whole web breaks. This is the flaw of might-makes-right: you cannot do everything alone. Tariffs are this performance of being a stronger thread that can break the web. We will suffer; the intact web was how we profited.

Buffalo was burned down the last time we had a war. I did not seek to make my home in a future battlefield. I do not think anyone around me did. We would be fighting people we mostly like. We have nothing to gain, only lose, from trying to make Canada a state.

I am watching a government with values that oppose mine try to reshape the world in its desired image: one where there’s no rights, just a competition of power. We cannot have rights unless the weakest and least desirable of us do, and are protected. No justice, no peace is more description than threat: it’s also a prophesy. Tyranny snuffs out the creativity to grow. The greatest that America ever was are the moments when we reaped the collective success of collective freedom. We never reached the full potential of what we could be, our desires to control each other being pesky obstacles in that project. It’s worth the effort to work towards being better than we currently are.

I’m going to stop writing – I’ll cut a slice of the soda bread that my friends brought over yesterday, as we shared dinner. I’ll think about helping another friend move – they just got a new apartment, and it’s delightfully close to my home. That future brings me joy. I’ll go to church. Tomorrow I will go to work and stare at Canada, and strategize with my coworkers about how we’re going to care for people in a world where care itself is being attacked.

I live on a beautiful border. It’s one of sovereignty, one of before and after, and one of an unknown future. May we make decisions that push that future into a world of care, respect, and mutual concern. What we do matters.