My dad's birthday is this week. He died in 2002 — way too young. But the date got me thinking about my youth, and my dad, and my hometown.

There's something about that word, isn't there? "Hometown." It brings back not just memories, but feelings, and emotions ... stuff you can't describe.

I was watching Bruce Springsteen's "On Broadway" special on Netflix recently, and he spoke about this very thing. Here's how he described memories of his hometown of Freehold, N.J.:

"There was a place there. You could hear it. You could smell it. It was a place where people made lives, where they worked, and where they danced, and where they enjoyed small pleasures, and played baseball, and suffered pain. Where they had their hearts broke, and where they made love, and had kids, where they died, and drank themselves drunk on spring nights. And where they did their very best ... the best that they could."

That's life, right? That place where we did the best we could.

Keep that in mind as you talk with folks, interact with them, drive past them, ask them questions.

We keep talking about "them" — the enemy, the folks who are keeping this country, and this world, from being the best it can be.

But to "them," we are "them." Does that make sense? We've met the enemy, folks, and they are us.

Somehow, we've got to meet in the middle.

This world ... it's our hometown. Everyone's. It's where we're all doing our best ... the best we can do.

Isn't that enough?