Sometimes the news makes me want to get in a time machine and truck it back to an era before even radio.

Imagine the world being defined by the people who go to your church, attend your school, reside in your neighborhood, and live in your house.

How might your values be different? What about your daily thoughts? How about the issues with which you concern yourself?

Perhaps you say it is defined by those things. But is it, really?

If it were, chances are, your experience would be very different, even in terms of your inner dialogue.

Right now, I’m thinking about the Magnum P.I. reboot. More specifically, I’m considering two things:

• He will have a goatee, rather than a mustache.
• They’ve removed the comma from the title. This is, at least in part, to make the title more friendly to online searches. It isn’t surprising — we’ve become more streamlined as a society. Formal writing says to put two spaces between sentences, yet media — including this site — no longer bows to the two-space god. Titles on sites are no longer always capitalized. And…

Well, there’s my point. Why am I thinking about any of this?

Roseanne is canceled. Morgan Freeman is suing (in fact, I’m about to write an article about it). Trump and North Korea are continuing their pre-summit soap opera.

Would I be thinking about any of these things, if my life were defined by my community? What about you?

My point isn’t that a connection to the bigger world is a bad thing. I only hope we can make sure the people and situations immediately around us remain our primary focus.

It’s okay to think about Magnum. And Trump. Entertainment. And politics. But yesterday was Memorial Day — a time for remembrance. Of the reasons we are able to enjoy, not politics and entertainment, but our families. Our friends. Our lives. In the greatest country in the history of the world. Made great by those who left their communities and friends and family, so we could enjoy ours.

May we remember that — not just on Memorial Day, but every day.

And, incidentally, I’m glad he’s not going to have a mustache. Only Tom Selleck can pull that off.

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