Singer Pearl Bailey had this sassy smart saying: "There's a way to handle the regrets of your past. Don't hide from them. Just so long as you don't repeat them, your past will never catch up with you....!"
A no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip hunk of advice for that next school reunion. Right, the one you've been dreading. Hey, we all do in a way. I mean, how many can come back to their Park Ridge high school here and be Hillary Clinton? How many can return and be Harrison Ford? Yep, two Park Ridgeans who made it pretty big. Just like you're thinking all those other slick class presidents and hot cheerleaders have done too.
But here's a little secret from someone who has, to date, clocked 11of these bitter-sweet soirees. Just remember, you're looking at their outside from your inside. Think about that as you're reluctantly getting ready for the big night. What you're seeing is what they want you to see...what you're feeling is what you're allowing yourself to feel.
Maybe you're feeling some of the old hurts, embarrassments, defeats, rejections, whatever. But here's the secret -- those feelings are like old Marley's chains in A Christmas Carol. Dump 'em now! If you're going to play an old movie in your head tonight, try It's A Wonderful Night instead. Remember, that's the one where George Bailey learns this remarkable secret. The world wouldn't quite be what it is today were it not for you being in it! Yes, small little you and all those little things you've said and done along the way that you never even realized!
OK, that's some class-reunion advice from someone in town who's got this thing down pat. Just don't take as long to learn the secret as I did ...
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
WHAT'S A MIRACLE....?
A 14-year-old clings for hours in an ocean which has just swallowed up 152 lives from her crashed plane (Sun Times, July 2). They die, she lives, the media call it a miracle. But how to define that word....?
Science calls miracles as-yet-unexplainable phenomena. Statisticians call them beating-the-odds. Theologians call them extraordinary interventions. Atheists and agnostics call them luck.
Here's what some of us call them -- reminders! They are those totally incalculable split-seconds in the life of our world when something occurs beyond all possible means of reasoning. And so they lodge forever inside our hearts like a time-clock. If we ever we say "impossible" again, we can now remember the word has no firm place in the lexicon of life.
Think about that the next time you're bobbing alone in your ocean of troubles....!
Science calls miracles as-yet-unexplainable phenomena. Statisticians call them beating-the-odds. Theologians call them extraordinary interventions. Atheists and agnostics call them luck.
Here's what some of us call them -- reminders! They are those totally incalculable split-seconds in the life of our world when something occurs beyond all possible means of reasoning. And so they lodge forever inside our hearts like a time-clock. If we ever we say "impossible" again, we can now remember the word has no firm place in the lexicon of life.
Think about that the next time you're bobbing alone in your ocean of troubles....!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
And so another new beginning to our lives. The beginning of the second half of 2009. What waits for us up ahead? As members of our family, as citizens of our nation, as members of the world community....?
The distance between our mornings and those mountains of achievement we dream about may be longer than we'd like. Or perhaps shorter than we think. Either way, there's really only two ways to travel them....
....either we get through them, or we go through them!
Subtle but stunning distinction here. Getting through is the conventional slugging your way down the crooked miles; going through means a large lusty squeeze of every piece of every day. Now who among us can really do that? Well, saints and poets maybe. But the rest of us -- from president to pawnbroker -- can at least try.
Consider the daily sights, sounds, smells and stars that loom just up ahead.
The sight of another crimson dawn seeping across the green of our world...the landscape of morning joggers and delivery-truck drivers....the vision of beautiful women with long hair snapping in the breeze....the portrait of brief-cased ambitions stepping briskly into commuter trains....the broad-shoulders of bulky men sweating as they go about the job of keeping a city alive....the skyline of soaring buildings stretching their glass and concrete as if trying to reach heaven.
Also the everyday sounds out there. Too rich and resonant to simply get through, you have to go through them. Honestly, who's too busy -- president or pawnbroker -- to pause at least a moment over the rhapsodies of the starlings and sparrows...the credenzas of the breezes strumming the trees...the buzz of lawnmowers manicuring our plots of the earth....the roar of jets sending and bringing back aisles of big deals and even bigger dreams....and, not to be forgotten, the sounds of puppies yapping and kids yelping at the break of another succulent summer day.
And oh the smells. Fragrances, really, if you take the time. The bouquet of fresh-brewed coffee...the perfume of fresh-mowed lawns...the tang of blooming gladiolas and peonies....say and what about the exhaust fumes of fat shipping trucks and clanging garbage haulers, for even the sounds of dissonance help make the symphony all the richer and more complex.
Now as for the stars -- well, there are more than the ones which wink during the night. This next half of 2009 has a storehouse of less tangible stars waiting for us. If only we take the time to feel their light. Just getting through another six months won't do. It won't do at all! Each of us -- presidents to pawnbrokers -- can't fully function without the magnets of a few future new possibilities in our lives. Maybe a new career, a new child, a new home, a new contract, a new law, some new victory little or large that shines there just beyond our usual reach.
Sure, we can get through our life without stars. But to really go through our life demands constellations of hopes and dreams that make the trip worth the time. And this half of the year seems as good a time as any.
The distance between our mornings and those mountains of achievement we dream about may be longer than we'd like. Or perhaps shorter than we think. Either way, there's really only two ways to travel them....
....either we get through them, or we go through them!
Subtle but stunning distinction here. Getting through is the conventional slugging your way down the crooked miles; going through means a large lusty squeeze of every piece of every day. Now who among us can really do that? Well, saints and poets maybe. But the rest of us -- from president to pawnbroker -- can at least try.
Consider the daily sights, sounds, smells and stars that loom just up ahead.
The sight of another crimson dawn seeping across the green of our world...the landscape of morning joggers and delivery-truck drivers....the vision of beautiful women with long hair snapping in the breeze....the portrait of brief-cased ambitions stepping briskly into commuter trains....the broad-shoulders of bulky men sweating as they go about the job of keeping a city alive....the skyline of soaring buildings stretching their glass and concrete as if trying to reach heaven.
Also the everyday sounds out there. Too rich and resonant to simply get through, you have to go through them. Honestly, who's too busy -- president or pawnbroker -- to pause at least a moment over the rhapsodies of the starlings and sparrows...the credenzas of the breezes strumming the trees...the buzz of lawnmowers manicuring our plots of the earth....the roar of jets sending and bringing back aisles of big deals and even bigger dreams....and, not to be forgotten, the sounds of puppies yapping and kids yelping at the break of another succulent summer day.
And oh the smells. Fragrances, really, if you take the time. The bouquet of fresh-brewed coffee...the perfume of fresh-mowed lawns...the tang of blooming gladiolas and peonies....say and what about the exhaust fumes of fat shipping trucks and clanging garbage haulers, for even the sounds of dissonance help make the symphony all the richer and more complex.
Now as for the stars -- well, there are more than the ones which wink during the night. This next half of 2009 has a storehouse of less tangible stars waiting for us. If only we take the time to feel their light. Just getting through another six months won't do. It won't do at all! Each of us -- presidents to pawnbrokers -- can't fully function without the magnets of a few future new possibilities in our lives. Maybe a new career, a new child, a new home, a new contract, a new law, some new victory little or large that shines there just beyond our usual reach.
Sure, we can get through our life without stars. But to really go through our life demands constellations of hopes and dreams that make the trip worth the time. And this half of the year seems as good a time as any.
WHAT'S THE VALUE OF VALUE?
The Cook County Assessor's Office announced real estate values here have dropped to historic lows. Here's a question for the Assessor: You're the expert, so what's a workable formula for figuring the other values in these homes...?
I doubt crunching your numbers will ever get a grip on the value of the joys and memories which live in those houses. Or the value of the different marriages and families that flourished under these roofs. Or the value of the teaching and tears and chocolate chip cookies that took place in those rooms.
Or, say, what about the value of the education which saved paychecks paid for, or the holiday dinners and anniversary parties that once filled the air in there, or the tense nights spent awake with a sick child, or the jubilant mornings sharing the start of a new adventure?
Mr. Houlihan -- your work is limited to numbers, and we all understand that. But sometimes don't you look up from your cool antiseptic numbers, and wonder about the many lives and loves and legacies which took place inside those walls? I'll bet you do, and I'll bet it reminds you everytime that we'll never be able to fit the scope of our humanity into the size of a calculator!
I doubt crunching your numbers will ever get a grip on the value of the joys and memories which live in those houses. Or the value of the different marriages and families that flourished under these roofs. Or the value of the teaching and tears and chocolate chip cookies that took place in those rooms.
Or, say, what about the value of the education which saved paychecks paid for, or the holiday dinners and anniversary parties that once filled the air in there, or the tense nights spent awake with a sick child, or the jubilant mornings sharing the start of a new adventure?
Mr. Houlihan -- your work is limited to numbers, and we all understand that. But sometimes don't you look up from your cool antiseptic numbers, and wonder about the many lives and loves and legacies which took place inside those walls? I'll bet you do, and I'll bet it reminds you everytime that we'll never be able to fit the scope of our humanity into the size of a calculator!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
HIRING BETTER CITIZENS
The press is reporting the city's attempt to get a federal grant to hire 400 more cops. The catch, according to the city, is the money it will cost us to get the grant. Let me correct that. It's not the money but the morals that's the catch...!
Whenever the Mayor wants, he can always stir up the money. What he can't stir up are the morals. The civic morality on the part of us Chicagoans whose everyday habits all to often border on the ammoral if not the immoral. Until that changes, 400 new cops won't make a dent. Nor will 4000.
I'm not talking the bad guys here -- murderers, rapists, burglars, drug pushers. Chicago's finest have at least a fighting chance against them. It's the rest of us whose little everyday habits overwhelm our fair city. Road ragers...DUIs...crowd trouble-makers...barroom brawlers...purse snatchers....subway hecklers....street hustlers...all the seamy sides to our after-Eden human nature.
Despite the usual grumbling about errant cops, they're still the last thin blue line between us and the jungle. But if the rest of us keep acting like -- well, like people! -- no amount of cops is going to tame our animal nature and hold back its jungle.
Maybe what we need to hire are not better cops, but better citizens
Whenever the Mayor wants, he can always stir up the money. What he can't stir up are the morals. The civic morality on the part of us Chicagoans whose everyday habits all to often border on the ammoral if not the immoral. Until that changes, 400 new cops won't make a dent. Nor will 4000.
I'm not talking the bad guys here -- murderers, rapists, burglars, drug pushers. Chicago's finest have at least a fighting chance against them. It's the rest of us whose little everyday habits overwhelm our fair city. Road ragers...DUIs...crowd trouble-makers...barroom brawlers...purse snatchers....subway hecklers....street hustlers...all the seamy sides to our after-Eden human nature.
Despite the usual grumbling about errant cops, they're still the last thin blue line between us and the jungle. But if the rest of us keep acting like -- well, like people! -- no amount of cops is going to tame our animal nature and hold back its jungle.
Maybe what we need to hire are not better cops, but better citizens
WHEN'S TH BEST TIME TO DIE?
"Houston, we have a problem up here. Only it's taking place down there....!"
That warning didn't actually occur on the last Shuttle flight, but it very well could have. Because what those young astronauts were looking down on is a population revolution. Something no one has ever experienced before. The aging of our world so rapidly there won't be enough young people left to sustain it.
Until the 20th century, we were dying off at average ages between 35 and 45. When in 1935 Roosevelt's New Deal passed our first old-age pension plan (Social Security), most of us were still dying off in our early 60s. Well before Social Security kicked in at 65. But now in developed countries we're living longer than our pension plans calculated. Which means we're starting to outlive the funds we were courting on to live.
Our species has this astonishing way of shooting itself in the foot time and time again. We're always coming up with new was to kill each other off, pollute our planet, turn religions into rage. Now -- with supreme irony -- we've figured out how to live longer than we can afford to.
The answer to this socio-economic-philosophical crisis is clear -- we've got to more realistically manage our politicians' pension and healthcare promises . Europe has done a better job than we have, because we have this hubristic myth that as Americans we have the inalienable right to everything....! And without paying for it....! And when a president happens along to explain why that's lunacy, the critics call him crazy.
While the fully-pensioned politicians debate this mess in Washington, back here on the ranch we're already feeling the early ripple effects. Slashed pension coverage...older age requirements....fewer early if any retirements... and lots more gray-haired folks counting coupons in restaurants and stores while impatient youngsters grumble about all the old geezers in their world.
In ancient cultures, age was equated with wisdom and honor. Try sharing that thought with the young bucks on Wall Street, the gangs in city schools, the shoving crowds at Wrigley, and the bikers and joggers on Sundays. The inter-generational warfare some predicted back in the 90s hasn't broken out. Still, there is this simmering tension between geezer and gusto.
As America (much of the world as well) ages by the billions, every institution from government to education to religion needs to make serious mid-course adjustments.A few ugly years ago there was a governor in Colorado who proposed planned euthanasia for those of us becoming too costly to keep living. He probably never heard playwright Thornton Wilder's paean to age: "The highest tribute to the dead is not grief, but gratitude."
What better time to pay that tribute than while we geezers are still with you..?
That warning didn't actually occur on the last Shuttle flight, but it very well could have. Because what those young astronauts were looking down on is a population revolution. Something no one has ever experienced before. The aging of our world so rapidly there won't be enough young people left to sustain it.
Until the 20th century, we were dying off at average ages between 35 and 45. When in 1935 Roosevelt's New Deal passed our first old-age pension plan (Social Security), most of us were still dying off in our early 60s. Well before Social Security kicked in at 65. But now in developed countries we're living longer than our pension plans calculated. Which means we're starting to outlive the funds we were courting on to live.
Our species has this astonishing way of shooting itself in the foot time and time again. We're always coming up with new was to kill each other off, pollute our planet, turn religions into rage. Now -- with supreme irony -- we've figured out how to live longer than we can afford to.
The answer to this socio-economic-philosophical crisis is clear -- we've got to more realistically manage our politicians' pension and healthcare promises . Europe has done a better job than we have, because we have this hubristic myth that as Americans we have the inalienable right to everything....! And without paying for it....! And when a president happens along to explain why that's lunacy, the critics call him crazy.
While the fully-pensioned politicians debate this mess in Washington, back here on the ranch we're already feeling the early ripple effects. Slashed pension coverage...older age requirements....fewer early if any retirements... and lots more gray-haired folks counting coupons in restaurants and stores while impatient youngsters grumble about all the old geezers in their world.
In ancient cultures, age was equated with wisdom and honor. Try sharing that thought with the young bucks on Wall Street, the gangs in city schools, the shoving crowds at Wrigley, and the bikers and joggers on Sundays. The inter-generational warfare some predicted back in the 90s hasn't broken out. Still, there is this simmering tension between geezer and gusto.
As America (much of the world as well) ages by the billions, every institution from government to education to religion needs to make serious mid-course adjustments.A few ugly years ago there was a governor in Colorado who proposed planned euthanasia for those of us becoming too costly to keep living. He probably never heard playwright Thornton Wilder's paean to age: "The highest tribute to the dead is not grief, but gratitude."
What better time to pay that tribute than while we geezers are still with you..?
Monday, June 29, 2009
JESUS WAS IN THE PARADE!
Numbers have meanings. Often 3 is often considered mystic...5 is what you need for a Supreme Court decision...51 for a Senate vote. But how about the number 450,000....?
That's the estimated number of Chicagoans at this week's Gay Parade. A parade which once attracted only a few thousands (including hecklers), now brings out nearly a half million citizens whose very presence tells us we are living an enormous historical shift.
Just as the world shifted its views and values about black cats, witches, voodoo dolls and mental health, increasing majorities are re-positioning themselves about gays and lesbians. Oh, there are still hecklers. And theological zealots. But increasingly, both science and common sense are shouting them down.
This week's parades around the nation were not simply about gay marriage. They were about basic human rights. The right to be who you are, just the way nature and/or God created you.
Every day we -- hecklers as well as advocates -- are learning how the human genetic system has explanations for gays and lesbians no differently than for gifted athletes and astounding geniuses. In Chicago the number 450,000 is a number to remember, for it's the cutting edge of a surge of long-deferred wisdom. As a species we're pretty slow sometime....but eventually we catch up with reality. And, in this case, with truth.
Let me venture a guess. If this were Galilee and if Jesus were alive, he'd have been in the parade. Better yet, my theology tells me he would have been leading the parade. If the hecklers can find where the Messiah ever denounced gays and lesbians, I'd love to see where he said it...!
That's the estimated number of Chicagoans at this week's Gay Parade. A parade which once attracted only a few thousands (including hecklers), now brings out nearly a half million citizens whose very presence tells us we are living an enormous historical shift.
Just as the world shifted its views and values about black cats, witches, voodoo dolls and mental health, increasing majorities are re-positioning themselves about gays and lesbians. Oh, there are still hecklers. And theological zealots. But increasingly, both science and common sense are shouting them down.
This week's parades around the nation were not simply about gay marriage. They were about basic human rights. The right to be who you are, just the way nature and/or God created you.
Every day we -- hecklers as well as advocates -- are learning how the human genetic system has explanations for gays and lesbians no differently than for gifted athletes and astounding geniuses. In Chicago the number 450,000 is a number to remember, for it's the cutting edge of a surge of long-deferred wisdom. As a species we're pretty slow sometime....but eventually we catch up with reality. And, in this case, with truth.
Let me venture a guess. If this were Galilee and if Jesus were alive, he'd have been in the parade. Better yet, my theology tells me he would have been leading the parade. If the hecklers can find where the Messiah ever denounced gays and lesbians, I'd love to see where he said it...!
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