Emotionally Intelligent Nation: If I Worked in Your Shoes…

(Washington D.C. – April 17, 2024) 

What is it like to leave everything you know? 

Everything you love? 

And start over?

Growing up, my family moved a lot. I felt very transient, lacking any real stability. Between kindergarten and 12th grade, I attended about 9 different schools and lived in approximately 11 different homes during the same time period. Mine was the result of an unfortunate set of circumstances. 

Understandably, nobody would choose to live that kind of life on purpose—except military families. 

They do it all the time. 

The life of a military person is one of transience—moving, relocating, and starting all over again.

According to several public sources, as of November 2023, almost 1% of the U.S. adult population are active-duty service members, which equates to about 1.3 million people who are opting to live this way. 

For them, it’s a constant resetting.

Thus, it was refreshing and inspiring to see efforts launched to improve this dynamic for these 1M persons. Led by the FLOTUS, Jill Biden, the White House released an initiative earlier this week that would allow the spouses of military personnel to exercise the option to work remotely—even when deployed internationally. So far, this provision only extends to military spouses who are employed by the Federal Government. Nonetheless, this is a positive sign for our country.

As a nation growing in our collective degree of emotional intelligence, gestures like this from the desk of the

First Lady and the President alike indicate that we are all in this together. Our ability to empathize and adjust our behaviors in light of this awareness is emotional intelligence in action. And as a nation at the forefront of influence for much of the free world, the Earth’s inhabitants benefit as we become a more emotionally intelligent nation.

My name is Rodney C. Burris. I am the White House Correspondent for BMORENews, a media outlet in Baltimore where our slogan is, “the news before the news.” This column will look at the events impacting our nation and filter them through the lens of Emotional Intelligence theory. Our goal will be to inform, to make aware, to facilitate connectivity, and then to increase the overall understanding of ourselves as a collective as we take a deep dive into the topics affecting our Emotionally Intelligent Nation.