Imagine standing on Constitution Avenue, the air heavy with smoke and sirens echoing in the distance. You lift your phone to record what feels almost impossible to process: the U.S. Capitol, its dome and upper floors swallowed by flames. People around you are frozen, some shouting in shock, others just staring in silence. You zoom in and out, your hands shaking, trying to capture the fire as it tears through the structure, while debris falls from above like burning confetti.
It’s moments like these—whether real or imagined—that remind us how fragile the symbols we take for granted can be. What feels permanent can be gone in an instant. But there’s also a strange clarity in that thought. If great monuments can fall, it makes the time we have, the connections we make, and the little things we often overlook all the more important.
Sometimes the loudest message isn’t in the destruction itself, but in the way it forces us to stop, breathe, and decide how we’ll carry forward.
