HOLIDAYS & RABBIT HOLES

The Bible speaks of old men having dreams and young men seeing visions. Hard to argue with The Book, and yet this seems to emphasize the distance between visions and dreams. Between our future and our past. But there's also the connection...!

Watching climbers repelling their way up mountains, you see this connection in action. The grappling hook reaches up to the future of the mountaintop, while the hook boots on the way up depend on each dig of the foot. Futures don't happen without pasts to build on. One of the dynamics that comes with being human.

Which is why this time of year is so good for us. Young and old, visionaries and dreamers. We all get another chance to better appreciate one another. You see, this is the season for college weekends. class reunions. family holidays, and sacred holydays. That toe-squishing time when different ages and aspirations melt together if only for a little while.

Of all the infamous "gaps" in a country -- party, race, gender, income -- the generational one can be the most counter-productive. Read the bitter editorials about "spoiled elders" and "irresponsible kids." Watch the boisterous clashes when young and old bump into each another in street traffic or stadium crowds. The same-old-same-old. Each age grousing about the other. Too slow/too rushed; too irrelevant/too brash; too out-of-the-loop/too tied-up-in-themself.

What makes a city and a country work best is when it builds on its commonalities rather than its contradictions. Right now we're a nation with too few values in common. Politics...government...banks,,, schools...religion... gender. Democracy can be such a can of disagreeable worms, pretty soon we forget how to fish!

While some of this disagreeability may be beyond easy reach, this particular season of the year we get a most agreeable chance to agree on at least one thing. One another. The ageless fun of Halloween, families around the turkeys, and again around the trees, all help remind us. Visionaries or dreamers, young or old, future or past, Americans can still appreciate that the-way-we-were and the-way-we-want-to-be are not mutually exclusive.

If these three upcoming celebrations are the only times we poke our heads out of our own generational rabbit holes, so be it. Better than not. Better than always talking to our own. Better to re-discover that young visions and old dreams really do meet on the same playing field in this same game called life.

Ending 2009 with this thought could make 2010 a much better year...