On July 4, 1976, I stood in Washington with my family beside the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, waiting for it to get dark enough for the much-hyped fireworks show scheduled for the country’s bicentennial celebrating 200 years of the United States of America. 

With hundreds of thousands of people filling every available spot from the Washington Monument to the Potomac River, a handful of people stood in the pool itself, holding flags.

I felt the patriotic spirit that surged through the crowd, all of us hoping to put the madness and division of Vietnam and Watergate behind us. Even if they didn’t necessarily support him, everybody at the time appreciated the sentiment behind President Ford’s call for national healing,

Well, here we are, half a century later, looking ahead to next year’s semiquincentennial, a clunky name for the 250th birthday of the United States.

Once again, we’re wondering how we got so divided, so angry, so unsure of our country and its future. So far, though, I haven’t encountered much that gives me hope that it’s going to get better.

In my college years, I used to sit sometimes on the Civil War battlefields at the Wilderness and Chancellorsville — places where Americans mowed each down in droves – wondering how things got so bad that war became the one way to resolve their differences.

I understand it better now.

I worry that as we head into another one of those landmark years in the life of our nation that we don’t have nearly enough people in leadership trying to figure out ways to heal our wounds.

President Trump is so fixated on himself that he plans to put out a coin to honor our 250th birthday that will feature his face on it – on both sides. Heads or tails, you lose.

This isn’t a man interested in bringing us back together.

In Maine, we’re fortunate that our senators, Republican Susan Collins and independent Angus King, embrace the old-fashioned notion that we can compromise rather than clash. They see potential allies among colleagues from the other side of the aisle.

That spirit is at least part of the way we can overcome the fear, despair and hot tempers spotlighted constantly on cable television, radio and much of the internet.

In the end, it comes down to each American. If we’re going to keep this land of the free and home of the brave, we’re going to need the courage to stand up for each other and the Bill of Rights. There’s no place for shirkers.

Just about everyone in this country has, after all, recited a pledge that promises allegiance to “liberty and justice for all.” But we also must find ways to turn down the heat and search for common ground.

That doesn’t mean we abandon friends and neighbors to an autocratic regime or stop doing what we can to protect the powerless. We can, though, remember how much we have in common with every other American.

In 2026, we’ll have to choose if we want fireworks and good feeling on the Fourth — or every single day.