Lately, I've been arguing with campaign texts. They all start the same way: Here is the outrage of the day, and also, there's a tight deadline for funding for which your five bucks will make all the difference. I had been deleting them, but on a particularly emotionally frothy day, I replied to one. I wrote, "Tell me a vision of how your solutions would change the world I live in."

OK, full disclosure, there might have been a little spicy language in there, too.

No one ever answers. It's probably a robot on the other end, or an annoyed volunteer. Still, it feels cathartic, a slight detour from the intrusion on my time, and a reminder to myself that I'm a person who wants something more than fear or outrage.

I went to the No Kings protest. I walked up and down the crowd with the same restlessness I felt when I read those campaign texts. I love me some pithy signs, and ours even had an Elvis on stilts. There was good energy, yet something about it left me uneasy. I sat with that feeling all week, especially after I was asked why I didn't comment or post about the protest.

It's easy to shout what we're against; it's harder to name what comes next. The protest looked like a national catharsis, but I wondered whether it would ripple into something tangible or fade, as outrage so often does, leaving us right where we started, only more tired.

I don't mean that marches aren't powerful. They can be. I just kept wondering if saying no is all we ever get anymore. No kings, no autocrats, no fascists. Sure. But what about a yes? What's the world we want instead?

I'm starting to think the next era of change needs more than defiance; it needs imagination. It needs people brave enough to describe the future we want to live in, not only the one we refuse to repeat — a past that many in my crowd knew from experience.

Our protest crowd leaned older, the same few who have been holding vigils and stuffing envelopes for decades. Their voices still carried, but I could feel the fatigue beneath them. The fear wasn't just about who has power now. It was about what happens when their generation is gone, and whether anyone younger will keep showing up.

It struck me then that despair can be a form of love. They are afraid because they've given so much of themselves to a vision that still feels unfinished, and maybe even undefined. The sadness isn't apathy; it's the ache of people who want to see the work completed before the light fades. They want to live in a world they fought for.

We need movements that can hold both truth and possibility. We can stand against the crown, but we also need to imagine what kind of world we'll build without it. Resistance alone won't carry us forward. Only vision will. It's time to craft it.

So I text back to the void, and thousands march in the streets, and perhaps both gestures matter in the same small way. Each is a reminder that people still care enough to raise their hands, even if no one's quite sure what to reach for next.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Alex Radelich at Unsplash