Meeting Brad and Angelina in a Chicago Park

Occasionally come these little epiphanies in life where large truths suddenly appear to you. Like last Saturday morning as I watched two very different couples each strolling a lakefront park hand-in-hand....!

First came the two young and lean ones. Each in fashionable jogger outfits just back from their run. He of the Brad Pitt look, and she cute enough to stand next to Angelina without too much embarrassment. The shine in their eyes and the energy in their step tell you they greet each new day with a readiness to meet and match its challenges. Terrific. I even think I can remember that sense of tomorrow-ness myself.

The other couple was holding much older, frailer hands. Their gait much slower and less deliberative. The look in their eyes seemed less concerned with the challenge of the new, more with the comfort of the learned. You can't really know what's behind the message of the eyes. Still, it struck me they had caged so many challenges over so many years that now seemed a fine time to relax in the knowledge of those captivities. To reflect on the hunt, and to savor the victories.

Every age is the hardest age. In every age the young possess the energy and the old the experience to carry on the hunt. What may make this time different than any other in history is that today we know so much more about the dangers lurking ahead. Each new day we are drenched in a deluge of new dangers. Be it about our health or our banks, our jobs or our enemies, our DNA or our God. The truth that is supposed to free us sometimes paralyzes us!

While the couples were walking, I was sitting. Smelling the fragrance of spring out there. Glad that there is always the steel of the young with the scars of the old which together can keep caging the beasts of our jungles just enough so we can keep reaching the rewards of our journeys.