When the tide rises so does every boat. The fishing vessel and the yacht. The old and the new. Yours and mine.

It’s a metaphor. And it’s physics.

Somewhere along the way, we got sold a different story. A story where ones rising means anothers sinking. Where the only way to get ahead is to make sure someone else falls behind. We stopped thinking win-win and focused on win-lose. Where pointing a finger feels more productive than extending a hand.

Hint: It isn’t.

Here’s what the finger-pointers don’t want you to know: blame is free. It costs nothing to produce and it creates nothing of value. It’s the junk food of civic life — momentarily satisfying, ultimately empty, and quietly making everything worse. I encourage us to read that again.

The math of human progress has never worked through subtraction. Every breakthrough — vaccines, the internet, the end of famines, the expansion of rights — came from people who decided to build something instead of burn something.

We are 99.9% the same DNA. We want safety for our kids. We want dignity in our work. We want to contribute.

The 0.1% is what gets televised. And, we get told by those that seek to scare rather than inspire that “they” are the problem.

Don’t let the loudest voices in the room convince you that division is destiny. Division is a choice. And every single day, you get to make a different one.

Raise the tide and watch what happens.