WE'RE ALL EXILES. REALLY!

The forbidding spectacle of carnage in Japan is making thousands of survivors exiles from their old homes and towns and perhaps even nation. There will be those who see in this apocalyptic disaster warnings to humanity that it dare not peek into the cosmic powers of the gods, lest we destroy ourselves.

And yet, doomsayers have been saying this ever since we peeked into fire. Our doom, when and if it arrives, may come with a whimper we as yet have not knowledge of, rather than with one of the many bangs we currently fear.

Still, this notion of being an exile is haunting. We have no need of Armageddeon disasters to experience the pangs of exile. They knife through us every time we're compelled to leave our old home. Home defined as: Place of birth...neighborhoods in which we lived...homes in which we grew...jobs in which we matured ...friends in whom we invested. When we have to leave any of these, we Chicagoans are thereby exiles!

Some have the capacity to fix their eyes on what's up ahead. Opportunities gleaming in the light of bright new tomorrows and mayors. America, unlike older civilizations, has always been inclined this way; hence always a sunrise nation. Others have a yearning not to forget. In many ways, they are obliged not to forget. These are those among us who often busy themselves with everything from annual reunions to everyday clubs, from photo/video archives to family trees, from memoirs to autobiographies, from casual to systematic reminiscing.

We are a Janus-like species, lured by both what we have left and by what we are entering. It is the delicate balance between these twin lures which helps define who we are and how we live. But while conventional wisdom suggests it is mainly the old who look back, it is often the young who can best see the connection. Consider politicians like Teddy Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. They built so much of their agendas on a "renewal" of what America once was. Or take writers like Studs Terkel,Thornton Wilder and John Steinbeck who so brilliantly plumbed the depths of our yesteryears in spinning their narratives about our future years. Or filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and Martin Scorsese whose aesthetic power traces directly back to their ability to understand the way-we-were.

For some, being an exile is a lonely, discomforting obligation. Always sensing little whispers that "you are of another place and time." But Chicago looks in all the wrong places when we assume exiles are only those who wander other shores, longing to return home. Consider the suppressed energy of this longing, crackling just beneath the everyday surface of those around you. Those "misfits" whose family ties, social values, spiritual dispositions, and, yes, changed neighborhoods and traditions have all left them a little like the stunned survivors wandering the streets of a forever-altered Japan.

Exiles do the best we can. And, Mr Mayor-elect, we look with anticipation to a new Chicago which can still remember the-way-we-were...