President Obama has helped make the ubiquitous Black-Berry a cause ce'lebre. He, like millions of other stay-in-touch movers & shakers, finds this amazing pocket communicator indispensable. Not owning one, I take everyone's word for that. Only is it possible to find in this very indispensability today's grievous problem with dispensability....?
Let me explain, at the cost of sounding hopelessly calcified in some lost layer of time.
From what I have seen, the amazing Black-Berry -- like all today's computerized memory banks -- can delete faster than it can include. To include a piece of information or a name requires some moments of concentrated effort. Thought... open...click... click ....close. To delete same needs only a single (perhaps even thoughtless or accidental) click. Doesn't that have to give one pause? And please don't tell me about "all data is saved somewhere in the system," for I am not talking about digital systems but about human memories.
For some time, critics have indicted ours as a throw-away culture. Until our great recession, that was all too easy to admit and then ignore. Now, however, as we look through the shambles of that culture, we have compelling reason to re-consider much of what we have been so blithely throwing away. Money...caution....prudence...ethics....and most of all people.
When cultures collapse, the survivors get a second chance to get their priorities straight. Such as the people they have been raised by and with, have known and worked for, have shared and benefited from. In my calcified lifetime, these precious lives usually found their way into a telephone book. Like the old, tattered one Joan and I find impossible to part with.
It sits there on its kitchen shelf like an graying King Lear on his aging throne. It is a fading repository of all those names and numbers that have be-jeweled the crown of our lives together, and we proudly refuse to depose a single one of them!
I remember my sainted Mother pausing over her book at age 92 and sighing, "Nobody's left but me...." Had she a sparklingly efficient delete button at her disposal, I can assure you it would never have been clicked. Disposability was not high on her priority list. Nor is it on ours. Lives that have been part of us simply cannot be so discarded. And so each of these names of our lives shall yellow and age on their throne right along with Joan and me.
By the way, among those names may be some of you....
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
3 Good Things About Living Under O'Hare Field
Living here in pastoral Park Ridge, what can there be that's good about our noisy O'Hare Field neighbor....? Actually, despite some righteous rage at its daily noise and pollution, there are at least three.
First, its convenience. For air travelers, those departure gates are literally 20 minutes away. Of course getting to the gates and getting off the ground can be a half-a-lifetime difference!
Second, the airport continues to attract income-generating businesses and visitors to our community. In a recessionary downturn, every new buck is new help!
But there is a third and less quantifiable good that comes from our noisy neighbor. I grant that only some Park Ridgers may share this with me, however let me state my case anyway. For those of us who are retired from both careers and travels, there can be something exciting yet safe about O'Hare Field. Something that neither Mayor Daley nor our own mayoral candidates may think much about. It is that small tingly sensation when you stand in the safety of your own home at the very same time you feel the excitement of one of the world's busiest international airports.
Think of it this way. Even though you may be like me and done with the special drama of air travel, you can still look outside your window and experience the surge of global energy crackling in the skies above you. Every criss-cross pattern of contrails means perhaps another hundred passengers off to London, Paris, Tel Aviv or Peking. With a hundred different heartbeats of hope and anticipation.
Back down here on the safety of Park Ridge terra firma, imagineers like me look up and get a vicarious kick out of it all. What makes the thrill especially nice, is that it's totally cost and danger free. So to all those neighbors -- including my own brother who is also under one of these noisy flight patterns -- may I offer one retiree's very personal opinion.
You don't have to like our noisy O'Hare Field neighbor, but in a way you can always enjoy it!
First, its convenience. For air travelers, those departure gates are literally 20 minutes away. Of course getting to the gates and getting off the ground can be a half-a-lifetime difference!
Second, the airport continues to attract income-generating businesses and visitors to our community. In a recessionary downturn, every new buck is new help!
But there is a third and less quantifiable good that comes from our noisy neighbor. I grant that only some Park Ridgers may share this with me, however let me state my case anyway. For those of us who are retired from both careers and travels, there can be something exciting yet safe about O'Hare Field. Something that neither Mayor Daley nor our own mayoral candidates may think much about. It is that small tingly sensation when you stand in the safety of your own home at the very same time you feel the excitement of one of the world's busiest international airports.
Think of it this way. Even though you may be like me and done with the special drama of air travel, you can still look outside your window and experience the surge of global energy crackling in the skies above you. Every criss-cross pattern of contrails means perhaps another hundred passengers off to London, Paris, Tel Aviv or Peking. With a hundred different heartbeats of hope and anticipation.
Back down here on the safety of Park Ridge terra firma, imagineers like me look up and get a vicarious kick out of it all. What makes the thrill especially nice, is that it's totally cost and danger free. So to all those neighbors -- including my own brother who is also under one of these noisy flight patterns -- may I offer one retiree's very personal opinion.
You don't have to like our noisy O'Hare Field neighbor, but in a way you can always enjoy it!
Feminism Hits a Road Bump
Let me begin by asserting that I love women. Young women and old women...blond women and brunette woman...MBA women and homemaker women. Furthermore, I think Gloria Steinem is equally bright, beautiful and blessed. However...!!
This month the hard-earned feminist movement hit a big speed bump on its way to the promised land. It came by way of a nationwide poll. Granted, you can find a poll to say pretty much anything you want, because there are so silly many of them. Still, this was a poll whose results were published in USA Today, and thereby anointed as something to take seriously.
If we do, two of its results are stunning. More than that, they just may be correct. If true, every inch of over-due progress by the feminists suffers a great blow. And every chuckle-headed guy in every male-only gym or country club gets to make some cheap, nasty jokes.
First, the poll found that 25% of the young women questioned would prefer winning first prize on America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Second, 50% of them said they would marry an ugly man if he were rich.
One is left breathless. Not necessarily surprised, but breathless. Could these be the same admirable young women who are rising so rapidly in the ranks of business, education and government these days? The same women who are lately scoring higher than men in scholastic achievements and athletic accomplishments? The same magnificent women I call my daughters?
Well, I told you -- there are polls and there are polls! Perhaps not one in a hundred is worth taking to the bank. (Come to think of it, we'll have to change that cliche too won't we?). However, granting this poll some credibility, we are left to wonder what today's headline-making neuro-biologists would say. What evolutionary gene or brain lobe helps to explain such results.
Personally, I still have some trouble with these studies insisting that we all are -- young polled women included -- essentially the sum of our recently-dissected physiological parts. In my scientific ignorance, I still like to feel that we all are -- young polled women included -- a mystic total greater than this physiological sum. And therefore what makes us tick and click is considerably more and more mysterious than any pollster can quantify.
That being said, here's an un-polled conclusion of my own. Young women, just like young men, are a complex galaxy of little whirring emotions and aspirations that very often have little to do with reason or logic.Therefore when they say unreasonable and illogical things like some of them do about prizes and mates, maybe it's just something silly that washes across their sensorium at that particular moment.
Sorta like the way the giddy freedom and fragrance of another new spring does. Oh, if you haven't felt that lately, then just possibly you're being much too reasonable and logical for your own good
This month the hard-earned feminist movement hit a big speed bump on its way to the promised land. It came by way of a nationwide poll. Granted, you can find a poll to say pretty much anything you want, because there are so silly many of them. Still, this was a poll whose results were published in USA Today, and thereby anointed as something to take seriously.
If we do, two of its results are stunning. More than that, they just may be correct. If true, every inch of over-due progress by the feminists suffers a great blow. And every chuckle-headed guy in every male-only gym or country club gets to make some cheap, nasty jokes.
First, the poll found that 25% of the young women questioned would prefer winning first prize on America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Second, 50% of them said they would marry an ugly man if he were rich.
One is left breathless. Not necessarily surprised, but breathless. Could these be the same admirable young women who are rising so rapidly in the ranks of business, education and government these days? The same women who are lately scoring higher than men in scholastic achievements and athletic accomplishments? The same magnificent women I call my daughters?
Well, I told you -- there are polls and there are polls! Perhaps not one in a hundred is worth taking to the bank. (Come to think of it, we'll have to change that cliche too won't we?). However, granting this poll some credibility, we are left to wonder what today's headline-making neuro-biologists would say. What evolutionary gene or brain lobe helps to explain such results.
Personally, I still have some trouble with these studies insisting that we all are -- young polled women included -- essentially the sum of our recently-dissected physiological parts. In my scientific ignorance, I still like to feel that we all are -- young polled women included -- a mystic total greater than this physiological sum. And therefore what makes us tick and click is considerably more and more mysterious than any pollster can quantify.
That being said, here's an un-polled conclusion of my own. Young women, just like young men, are a complex galaxy of little whirring emotions and aspirations that very often have little to do with reason or logic.Therefore when they say unreasonable and illogical things like some of them do about prizes and mates, maybe it's just something silly that washes across their sensorium at that particular moment.
Sorta like the way the giddy freedom and fragrance of another new spring does. Oh, if you haven't felt that lately, then just possibly you're being much too reasonable and logical for your own good
Sunday, March 29, 2009
So What's So Wrong with Notslagia...?!
We've all heard the old adage, "Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: You find the present tense, but the past perfect." Some snarl -- head in the sand! Others smile -- head in the stars! So who's right?
Well of course the question makes no sense, for it has no answer. Our yesterdays are whatever each of us chooses to make of them. For some, they are little tombs housing our disappointments and failures. To these realists, the past is best left in the past. And who can argue with such edgy pragmatism.
But to the nostalgics, the past is a catechism of remembrances too sweet not to re-read. It catalogs the joys of youth and innocence and hope and love and victory back when. Why would anyone wish to banish these from the kingdom of our memory. And while this kingdom isn't for dwelling, it is for visiting. So why seal it up under the lock and key of today's expediencies?
That question is not unlike asking the tourist why he or she is re-visiting the same London and Paris enjoyed so many times before. In the place of places, let me suggest a particular place in time. A time in mid-century America when radio was king of the kingdom. Not high art, but the highest rated form of pop culture during the 30s,40s, and 50s.
Nostalgics like to call it the Golden Age of Radio, for back then it was much more than today's cacophony of fast-talking deejays, breathless news-breaks and under-enuciated traffic reports. It was live music performances ...daily dramas (soaps) and romps (kid shows).... home-waking advice....comedy.... on-location, in-depth news. Not all of the highest quality perhaps, but all of the highest effort and ratings. So high, in fact, that virtually half a nation was listening in all at the same bonding times.
Lest this sound like pointless nostalgia turned to useless sentimentality, let it be known that this age of radio was actually our national morals meter! It helped energize the listeners and the land with a common sense of right and wrong. A lot more mythological than theological, yet a moral energy nevertheless.
And what exactly was that...? Collectively speaking, it included the nationwide conviction that there was good and evil in the world, good eventually prevailed over evil, comedy could be clean, leaders could be respected, governments were more solution than problem, the American work ethic made sense, talent and achievement were worthwhile...honor was not foolish...and foolishness was not honorable.
I've heard some Carpe Diem realists call the energy that was radio back then "corn for the ill-educated!" That, I submit, comes from listening to those old programs with today's ears. Today's more cynical ears which like to call themselves part of a more sophisticated age. Still, I can't help wonder if those nostalgics who collect and play these old radio programs haven't found a wavelength to American morals that today's Wall Street and Washington greed and graft could learn from....
Well of course the question makes no sense, for it has no answer. Our yesterdays are whatever each of us chooses to make of them. For some, they are little tombs housing our disappointments and failures. To these realists, the past is best left in the past. And who can argue with such edgy pragmatism.
But to the nostalgics, the past is a catechism of remembrances too sweet not to re-read. It catalogs the joys of youth and innocence and hope and love and victory back when. Why would anyone wish to banish these from the kingdom of our memory. And while this kingdom isn't for dwelling, it is for visiting. So why seal it up under the lock and key of today's expediencies?
That question is not unlike asking the tourist why he or she is re-visiting the same London and Paris enjoyed so many times before. In the place of places, let me suggest a particular place in time. A time in mid-century America when radio was king of the kingdom. Not high art, but the highest rated form of pop culture during the 30s,40s, and 50s.
Nostalgics like to call it the Golden Age of Radio, for back then it was much more than today's cacophony of fast-talking deejays, breathless news-breaks and under-enuciated traffic reports. It was live music performances ...daily dramas (soaps) and romps (kid shows).... home-waking advice....comedy.... on-location, in-depth news. Not all of the highest quality perhaps, but all of the highest effort and ratings. So high, in fact, that virtually half a nation was listening in all at the same bonding times.
Lest this sound like pointless nostalgia turned to useless sentimentality, let it be known that this age of radio was actually our national morals meter! It helped energize the listeners and the land with a common sense of right and wrong. A lot more mythological than theological, yet a moral energy nevertheless.
And what exactly was that...? Collectively speaking, it included the nationwide conviction that there was good and evil in the world, good eventually prevailed over evil, comedy could be clean, leaders could be respected, governments were more solution than problem, the American work ethic made sense, talent and achievement were worthwhile...honor was not foolish...and foolishness was not honorable.
I've heard some Carpe Diem realists call the energy that was radio back then "corn for the ill-educated!" That, I submit, comes from listening to those old programs with today's ears. Today's more cynical ears which like to call themselves part of a more sophisticated age. Still, I can't help wonder if those nostalgics who collect and play these old radio programs haven't found a wavelength to American morals that today's Wall Street and Washington greed and graft could learn from....
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Generation Gap Growls with New Gusto
Well, it's that old generation gap thing again. It's back just in time for the great recession....!
Giving a long-standing battle cry a new shout, University of Virginia professor Timothy Salthouse has released his findings about the way young and old brains function. Only his thesis is worse than most of us thought (with either our young or old brain). Salthouse says the cut-off point is 22.
Good lord, at 22 most of us are too young to even suspect what it means to be old. Our young brains are throbbing inside young bodies that tell us that both our brain and our body will feel like this forever. Not so, insists the brainy professor, and to prove it he has the cognitive test results from 2000 healthy people ranging from 18 to 60. Using puzzle-solving, word-recall and story details, he concludes we hit our peak at 22. And by 27 -- well forget it (as you probably will anyway) because you're already sliding down the other side of the brain's functionality.
Dr. Salthouse does throw us a cookie on our inevitable slide by suggesting that with age comes wisdom. At least when defined as "storehouse of vocabulary and general knowledge." However, lest we sliders get too giddy, Salthouse goes on to say this wisdom gig usually tops out at about 60.
One number that does not accompany his report is his own age, which I take to be somewhere midway between his appointed benchmarks. Usually most researchers are comfortably "midway" which lends them that much desired aura of scientific objectivity. In my case, 22 is so long ago I can only fictionalize it in my old brain; and even 60 has now become the-good-old-days.
All things and brains considered, professor Salthouse's thesis places President Obama, at 47, right smack in the middle of the brain's peak potential. Of coures neither the professor nor we can prove that. However, there is a good hint to that effect when you graph the daily barrage of criticisms aimed at the President's. Currently, the percentage of criticism from the young and the old, from the left and the right, graph out about equal. And as any history of democracy will suggest, leaders who make both extremes equally angry are leaders generally proceeding down the right path.
One thing neither Professor Salthouse nor President Obama has attended to yet is the way this recession is widening the generation gap in the pursuit of jobs. Right now the competition for entry level jobs in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants is being won by the older brains. The New York Times recently reported that in this market the 16-24 year olds have lost 2 million jobs and the 65-and-olders have added 700,000.
How does one try to summarize all these studies and numbers....? Perhaps one turns to some wise elders for their reflections from the far side of the slide:
Poet Robert Frost observed: "The reason worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work." And playwright Arthur Miller: "Maybe all one can do in this life is hope to end up with the right regrets."
Neither professors nor statisticians need add anything more.....
Giving a long-standing battle cry a new shout, University of Virginia professor Timothy Salthouse has released his findings about the way young and old brains function. Only his thesis is worse than most of us thought (with either our young or old brain). Salthouse says the cut-off point is 22.
Good lord, at 22 most of us are too young to even suspect what it means to be old. Our young brains are throbbing inside young bodies that tell us that both our brain and our body will feel like this forever. Not so, insists the brainy professor, and to prove it he has the cognitive test results from 2000 healthy people ranging from 18 to 60. Using puzzle-solving, word-recall and story details, he concludes we hit our peak at 22. And by 27 -- well forget it (as you probably will anyway) because you're already sliding down the other side of the brain's functionality.
Dr. Salthouse does throw us a cookie on our inevitable slide by suggesting that with age comes wisdom. At least when defined as "storehouse of vocabulary and general knowledge." However, lest we sliders get too giddy, Salthouse goes on to say this wisdom gig usually tops out at about 60.
One number that does not accompany his report is his own age, which I take to be somewhere midway between his appointed benchmarks. Usually most researchers are comfortably "midway" which lends them that much desired aura of scientific objectivity. In my case, 22 is so long ago I can only fictionalize it in my old brain; and even 60 has now become the-good-old-days.
All things and brains considered, professor Salthouse's thesis places President Obama, at 47, right smack in the middle of the brain's peak potential. Of coures neither the professor nor we can prove that. However, there is a good hint to that effect when you graph the daily barrage of criticisms aimed at the President's. Currently, the percentage of criticism from the young and the old, from the left and the right, graph out about equal. And as any history of democracy will suggest, leaders who make both extremes equally angry are leaders generally proceeding down the right path.
One thing neither Professor Salthouse nor President Obama has attended to yet is the way this recession is widening the generation gap in the pursuit of jobs. Right now the competition for entry level jobs in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants is being won by the older brains. The New York Times recently reported that in this market the 16-24 year olds have lost 2 million jobs and the 65-and-olders have added 700,000.
How does one try to summarize all these studies and numbers....? Perhaps one turns to some wise elders for their reflections from the far side of the slide:
Poet Robert Frost observed: "The reason worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work." And playwright Arthur Miller: "Maybe all one can do in this life is hope to end up with the right regrets."
Neither professors nor statisticians need add anything more.....
Friday, March 27, 2009
When Words Are Unnecessary
Words are powerful. They are strewn across the pages of the histories they have changed. And yet we all know what a thousand of them is worth -- a picture. And in many cases -- a sound. The sights and sounds of our days are often the most powerful prompts to our lives...!
The funny thing is that for all the courses in composition & literature, there are virtually none in sight & sound. A good reason to take a short one right here and now. Because the sights and sounds of our America are so much a part of our national consciousness. A consciousness that any effective leader must understand and use in times of challenge like now.
Lets start with the sights....
Beginning in the 19th century, the earliest sights to soak into the mass culture were the illustrations of Currier & Ives. By the millions, these images filled the newspapers and hung on the living room walls of the nation. Simple, affectionate images of pastoral America, family affection, children at play, puppies in frolic, heroes in battle, and all that we wanted to believe we were.
Beginning in the 20th century the sentimentally gifted illustrator Norman Rockwell took the torch, as his imaginings of Americana filled magazine covers that reached tens of millions. Again the images were an America of good and decent parents, children, grandpas, wise old folks, families at holidays, children in mischief and all those moments of magic that could be imagined in the life of this special corner of the world known as America.
Throughout that century our illustrators and photographers continued to freeze America in time with worth-a-thousand -words scenes that have seared their way into the deepest recesses of our national consciousness. The Gibson Girl...the Flapper...the Petty Girl....Coca-Cola's Santa....Morton's salt girl....Rosie the Riveter....Uncle Sam Wants You...the flag raised over Iwo Jima....the bobby-soxer....Mauldin's weeping-Lincoln at the death of JFK....Marilyn Monroe's flying skirt....the brooding James Dean...the scowling Nixon, the saxaphone-playing Clinton, Bush on his aircraft carrier, and handcuffed CEOs.
Each of these images and a thousand more come together in our national memory like a jigsaw that portrays this great and imperfect land of of ours. Each and everyone without a single word!
Then there are the sounds...
Throughout our wordy history, certain sounds have emerged and filtered into the ethers to compose a symphony of our America. Notes that play in our minds, instantly triggering thoughts and feelings that we 300 million share together. Understand together. Respond to together.
You can hear them with me. The pipes playing the "Yankee Doodle Dandy" that speaks of our Revolution.... the strains of "Across the Wide Missouri" which conjure up the endless wagon trains spreading westard across 19th century America....the Cavalry bugle that charged across that same west....the plinky piano of a Scott Joplin tune re-creating the riverboat-age in America...the brassy beat of "The Charleston" from the roaring twenties....the "Rock Around the Clock" thunder of the new age of Rock...the theme from "Rocky" which trumpets the American swagger of beating the odds....the theme from "The Godfather" which haunts our fascination with evil....the solemn notes of Taps which speak to our soul of all those who have died in our America.
And so it is that those of us who use words are humbled by those of you who speak in sights and sounds. Each embedding themselves so deeply into each of our psyches, that they can instantaneously bind and bond us. And could there be a better or more necessary time....?
The funny thing is that for all the courses in composition & literature, there are virtually none in sight & sound. A good reason to take a short one right here and now. Because the sights and sounds of our America are so much a part of our national consciousness. A consciousness that any effective leader must understand and use in times of challenge like now.
Lets start with the sights....
Beginning in the 19th century, the earliest sights to soak into the mass culture were the illustrations of Currier & Ives. By the millions, these images filled the newspapers and hung on the living room walls of the nation. Simple, affectionate images of pastoral America, family affection, children at play, puppies in frolic, heroes in battle, and all that we wanted to believe we were.
Beginning in the 20th century the sentimentally gifted illustrator Norman Rockwell took the torch, as his imaginings of Americana filled magazine covers that reached tens of millions. Again the images were an America of good and decent parents, children, grandpas, wise old folks, families at holidays, children in mischief and all those moments of magic that could be imagined in the life of this special corner of the world known as America.
Throughout that century our illustrators and photographers continued to freeze America in time with worth-a-thousand -words scenes that have seared their way into the deepest recesses of our national consciousness. The Gibson Girl...the Flapper...the Petty Girl....Coca-Cola's Santa....Morton's salt girl....Rosie the Riveter....Uncle Sam Wants You...the flag raised over Iwo Jima....the bobby-soxer....Mauldin's weeping-Lincoln at the death of JFK....Marilyn Monroe's flying skirt....the brooding James Dean...the scowling Nixon, the saxaphone-playing Clinton, Bush on his aircraft carrier, and handcuffed CEOs.
Each of these images and a thousand more come together in our national memory like a jigsaw that portrays this great and imperfect land of of ours. Each and everyone without a single word!
Then there are the sounds...
Throughout our wordy history, certain sounds have emerged and filtered into the ethers to compose a symphony of our America. Notes that play in our minds, instantly triggering thoughts and feelings that we 300 million share together. Understand together. Respond to together.
You can hear them with me. The pipes playing the "Yankee Doodle Dandy" that speaks of our Revolution.... the strains of "Across the Wide Missouri" which conjure up the endless wagon trains spreading westard across 19th century America....the Cavalry bugle that charged across that same west....the plinky piano of a Scott Joplin tune re-creating the riverboat-age in America...the brassy beat of "The Charleston" from the roaring twenties....the "Rock Around the Clock" thunder of the new age of Rock...the theme from "Rocky" which trumpets the American swagger of beating the odds....the theme from "The Godfather" which haunts our fascination with evil....the solemn notes of Taps which speak to our soul of all those who have died in our America.
And so it is that those of us who use words are humbled by those of you who speak in sights and sounds. Each embedding themselves so deeply into each of our psyches, that they can instantaneously bind and bond us. And could there be a better or more necessary time....?
Thursday, March 26, 2009
We're Off To See The Wizard!
The morning jogger was bent over at the curb outside my house. I noticed her as I was picking up the papers on my driveway. Instinctively I went over to her, "Is something wrong?"
"Terribly wrong...!
Then I realized her plight. A small robin lay dying there in a smattering of blood and feathers. "Oh god," the jogger cried, "how sad."
Death is always sad. Especially when it seems so wrong. As in the case of our small friend here, likely the victim of a passing car. The two stark-still robins nearby seemed to sense the same thing, but then they like we moved on.
Death comes into our life in so many painful ways. On the ascending hierarchy of our pain: Robins...pets... neighbors ...classmates...family...friends....parents....children....mates. Oh, and somewhere in there, those fond convictions by which we have lived our life. Their wakes are only held in our hearts.
I'm thinking here, for instance, my childhood conviction that each new day or mail brought a happy little surprise. That Jack Armstrong secret decoder ring....the college acceptance letter....the date I hoped for or the job I applied for or the lottery I prayed for. Youth does that to you. It energizes you with hopes little and large. And so you rise each morning with the conviction of hope; and hope like that surely makes life worth living.
And yet, time happens in every life. And so in time you find yourself getting up in the morning thinking: "No surprises, Lord, please no surprises!" When that happens, you know you've lost something. Very much like you do when other youthful convictions slip through your fingers. Say the surety of your invincibility...of your capacity to change the world...of your beliefs about good winning over evil, friends standing by you, leaders knowing how to lead, and nature remaining forever beautiful and benign.
Still, none of these little funerals need be catastrophic. Just as we somehow manage to go through the pain of other funerals, so do we the funerals of our young convictions. Many things -- from robins to loved ones -- will die and we will live. The living know no other way. Call it evolution or God, we are programmed to survive every funeral until our own.
Let the record show that survival is a good thing. A courageous thing, really. What is particularly surprising about this courage is that we never knew we possessed it. But because we do, just like the Cowardly Lion we continue to trek the Yellow Brick Road in search of our own Emerald City.
The Lion learned something essential. Not even the many inevitable deaths in our past can stop our steps into the future. So sing it along with me in the key of C: "We're Off To See The Wizard...."
"Terribly wrong...!
Then I realized her plight. A small robin lay dying there in a smattering of blood and feathers. "Oh god," the jogger cried, "how sad."
Death is always sad. Especially when it seems so wrong. As in the case of our small friend here, likely the victim of a passing car. The two stark-still robins nearby seemed to sense the same thing, but then they like we moved on.
Death comes into our life in so many painful ways. On the ascending hierarchy of our pain: Robins...pets... neighbors ...classmates...family...friends....parents....children....mates. Oh, and somewhere in there, those fond convictions by which we have lived our life. Their wakes are only held in our hearts.
I'm thinking here, for instance, my childhood conviction that each new day or mail brought a happy little surprise. That Jack Armstrong secret decoder ring....the college acceptance letter....the date I hoped for or the job I applied for or the lottery I prayed for. Youth does that to you. It energizes you with hopes little and large. And so you rise each morning with the conviction of hope; and hope like that surely makes life worth living.
And yet, time happens in every life. And so in time you find yourself getting up in the morning thinking: "No surprises, Lord, please no surprises!" When that happens, you know you've lost something. Very much like you do when other youthful convictions slip through your fingers. Say the surety of your invincibility...of your capacity to change the world...of your beliefs about good winning over evil, friends standing by you, leaders knowing how to lead, and nature remaining forever beautiful and benign.
Still, none of these little funerals need be catastrophic. Just as we somehow manage to go through the pain of other funerals, so do we the funerals of our young convictions. Many things -- from robins to loved ones -- will die and we will live. The living know no other way. Call it evolution or God, we are programmed to survive every funeral until our own.
Let the record show that survival is a good thing. A courageous thing, really. What is particularly surprising about this courage is that we never knew we possessed it. But because we do, just like the Cowardly Lion we continue to trek the Yellow Brick Road in search of our own Emerald City.
The Lion learned something essential. Not even the many inevitable deaths in our past can stop our steps into the future. So sing it along with me in the key of C: "We're Off To See The Wizard...."
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