Momentous

As I search for my pair of Frank Barone stretchy pants, my grandparents continue laboring away on Brazilian delicacies and my wife constructs a gingerbread house with the children. I sure hope I can find those pants before the stroke of midnight, when our weeklong food festival reaches its culmination.

Over the course of the night, we will indulge ourselves with great food and company, but let’s not forget why we are here. And I do not mean simply replacing Merry Christmas with Jesus is the reason for the season. I implore you to not let one more Christmas enter the books with lip service, but let the gravity of the event sink in. Athansius once wrote,

“Only the creator can redeem the creation…[thus] what else could He possibly do, being God, but renew his Image in humanity, so that they might once more come to know him.”

So as laughs are ready to roll and new memories ready to be forged, do not forget (or come to realize) that there is something greater at work. Borrowing from Thomas Aquinas, recognize that there is something – be it Santa Claus, good food, or quality time with ones you care about – around this time that points beyond itself to something greater. Nothing is more wasteful than a life unexamined and nothing more sad than missing a beat to recognize purpose in your life.

Take a second. Step back from the table. If our lives on Earth weren’t finite, no moment we’d experience would be urgent, precious or momentous. Let’s make this Christmas one that will be felt by our future generations.

Cliché

As you begin to write regularly, you quickly encounter a recurring issue: how do I avoid using words, phrases, and sayings that are overplayed. I do not want to become just one more person to loosely incorporate words such as epiphany, diverse, and carpe diem to illustrate my point. I regularly find myself afraid to type certain words into my writings, quadruple guessing their use when I do and consistently looking at the thesaurus for alternatives. How foolish of me.

These words have become overused for a reason – they are simply amazing. They concisely illustrate a feeling you have. For instance, my dad was (and I’m sure still is) very selective when he used the word awesome. He would always remind me that this word has a lot of descriptive punch. It literally means something that inspires awe within you. While I’m sure that burger at In-N-Out was great, let’s be honest, did it really create awe within you, or simply the positive feeling of being full with the promise of a bowel movement later.

This leads me to the term carpe diem. I first recognized, and I might just be an example of my generation, this word and its meaning through the film “Dead Poet’s Society”. These two words present an entire philosophy behind it. Dude, what power!

Now what I’m about to tell you is going to rock your world. It is going to be like a boxer’s right jab to the face… A Mike Tyson crunch to the ear even.

Tone down your worrying!

Life is too short to consistently be thinking of the bad things that potentially can happen. The truth is life is not a series of ill events, but good ones with bad ones sprinkled in. Enjoy the moment. I for one am tired of receiving good news, only to immediately think Oh God, that means something bad is right about to burst my bubble, or over-thinking all the bad stories I hear to the point where they come alive in my life.

I’m not saying to use this as an excuse for all sorts of rashness and quite frankly, not a reason to get yourself wasted. What I’m saying is I want to stop thinking of seconds and counting pages …I want to learn to savor my food and enjoy that book I’m reading.

Cheers.

Chicago

[Note: This was written on spec for an ad I saw looking for a blogger. It was done quickly as an exercise. The objective given was to write about what distinguishes Chicago and to keep in mind that I’d be blogging for a clothing store that plans to service only this city. The employer wanted a Chicago native, but I tried to lobby for my perspective – an outsider making Chicago his home.

Chicago

Not New York. A bit more manageable.
Definitely not Los Angeles. Much more real.
A more active San Francisco. Larger and with more vigor yet retaining its soul.

Chicago is a city I once knew solely through a sports lens. The South and their Sox playing second fiddle to the North and the Cubbies. The Bears being the toast of the town despite 1985 feeling more and more like 1908. The Bulls, who fostered a generation of admirers in the 90s, have since fallen far from ESPN’s radar.

Yes, there is crime and corruption that plagues it. There is also an ethnic divide that is easily discovered. Yet Chicago is much more than this and its sports culture. They only add to it. To use a cliché, Chicago is diverse... but contains a level of approachability that is surprising for a city of its stature. This is what I’ve come to enjoy more than anything.

Seasons are pronounced here. There is an abundance of museums from the noteworthy trifecta near Soldier field to lesser-known American gems such as Wright’s Old Home in Oak Park. Music is consistently around. Free many times I might add. Bars, lounges and clubs are sprinkled everywhere. People are moving about and for an outsider such as myself, it is exciting because one can easily fit in. Single or with a family; religious or soul-searching; student or professional...Chicago has a spot for you.

With this, it demands a style that matches. Eccletic to refined and everything in between. A Chicagonian does not fit a single boilerplate.

That is why it needs a store to reflect its interests.

Gray hair and soccer

I've aged a year, or two since July. Er, June. See what I mean. It is no joke. I've reached the point where when I lay in bed, getting ready to go off into my layers of dreams, I can feel the gray hairs conspiring to come out and surprise me the next morning. When I married, those ashen reminders of mankind's frailty decided to say hello. When I had a daughter, they decided to settle down. But over the course of the last few months they've become emboldened and embraced their own version of manifest destiny and ventured down to my beard. I feel like a Just for Men's box.

So as I said in my opening entry (or my creed as a reader kindly referred to it), what is the meaning of this? Why have these last few months, which have ironically afforded me more free time than I have had since I was five, added such mental fatigue?

Today I think I have an idea as to why. It came to me through a passage I remember reading a few years back. It was about the beautiful game and read:

I'll never forget the pregnant milliseconds that precede most goals and help make soccer uniquely orgasmic. By what I mean, is the millisecond just after the seasoned viewers have made a realization. They have realized their team will score, but they haven't had time to exult. They are waiting to inhale...

These words were beautifully penned because they so accurately captured the emotion that makes soccer, and sports in general, so amazing. But I never took it for more than that. Until now.

I am beginning to believe that each person does in fact hit similar benchmarks in life and the decisions that come out of these pivotal moments are what separate us as individuals. You either embrace it and forge forward, or retreat and lose valuable time. I assumed that the defining moment came when you moved out of your parent's home, or got married, or when you trekked abroad. Nope, those don't seem to be it. I see now it is the juncture where you begin to set your own roots. For me, over the last five years I have been constantly on the move, but this last relocation came with the guarantee that I'd be sitting still for least four years. This truth has hit me hard. It is time to figure out what I want because I can not ride it out until I move on the coming summer. There is no move next summer.

So as I walked home this evening with the first snow of the season making its way down on me, covering my grays with white, I had that realization the author pointed out. Something is about to happen, I just haven't had time to exult yet.