Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

It’s Christmas morning and I’m thinking of home. I mean, of course I am. It’s Christmas. Even if you can’t BE home you can still GO home, right? What else did you expect? Today isn’t the time to think about ideas or issues of the day. Come on…it’s Christmas! So it’s to home I go. To take a moment…just a moment…and peer through the windows of the home that lives in my heart. Come with me, won’t you? But bundle up now. It may be warm around the hearth but it’s awfully chilly standing outside at the window.

Off to Southbridge we go. Careful as we drive in. Lebanon Street was pretty narrow even back in the days of the original VW Bug. Even those big old Chevy wagons seem like mid-size cars when you park one next to, say, a Suburban. Look at all of the lights on the trees! They’re all colors, too; none of that pristine modern “tiny white lights only” stuff. And the snow! Southbridge was in a little snow zone in central Massachusetts. Heck, it seemed like every town north of New Jersey was in a snow belt back then. It looks pretty, all lit up by the street lights.

Here we are, 96 Lebanon Street. The house is so small! Look, the carport is still there. This must be BK, “before Kerstin.” Dad hasn’t turned it into a family room and a bedroom for the boys yet. The upstairs windows are all dark, but there’s a light on in the living room. Here, squeeze through the bushes and we can see in the front window. There’s Mom wrapping our gifts while Dad is putting all the decorations on the tree. I’d almost forgotten: when we went to bed on Christmas Eve there were no gifts out and the tree was bare. My parents would be up all night helping Santa bring Christmas home. Dad just opened a box of leaded tinsel and began to place the strands one at a time until you could barely see the lights and the decorations through the silver “rain”!

It’s Christmas morning now. Randy and I are sprinting up the front hall stairs so that means that Kerstin has joined us and we are now four. Randy is leading the charge, of course. He was always up first on Christmas day, dragging me out of bed and then jumping up and down on Tracey and Kerstin until they got out of bed and we all headed in to Mom and Dad’s room. We had to wait for Dad to to downstairs first. There he is! Oh my, he really looks tired; he must have pulled a near all-nighter. In goes the plug and on go the lights, and Dad is setting up his camera, complete with that silver plate-surrounded flash bulb that instantly blinded us as we tore down the stairs and around the corner.

Santa made it to 96 Lebanon Street again!

Did you have visiting family, or did you travel to a relative’s house on Christmas Day? Gama and Gramp always came to visit us in Southbridge for Christmas dinner. Just peak around the corner of the house over here by the Pingeton’s and you can see Gramp’s Cadillac pulling up. I honestly can’t remember if they brought more presents, only that it just wasn’t a whole Christmas until they arrived. We’re all excited. Even from all the way over here you can see Dad smile as my Mom hugs her parents.

Here, take my hand and let’s take a walk over to 30 Kirkbrae Drive. My family has moved to Rhode Island now. Don’t worry, it’s only a short walk. Christmas is a time of magic and wonder. We’ll be there in just a couple of minutes. Whoa…I forgot how much bigger 30 Kirkbrae was than 96 Lebanon. Same colored Christmas lights on the bushes, though!

It looks like we, the older three of us, are in college which means that Kerstin is in high school. We lost Gramp a few years ago. Everyone says he died of a broken heart. I know losing him broke mine. We can come right up to the big picture window here on the porch. Gama’s there, too. She lives with Mom and Dad and Kerstin now. We’re all hanging that same leaded tinsel on the tree, one strand at a time! Dad gave up the all-nighters years ago but somehow has managed to find that tinsel even though the country banned it years ago.

Did I ever tell you about the White family tradition of “rejecting gifts”? Mom wanted everyone to love every gift. If you really didn’t like something you could politely say so and decline it. The catch: there would be no substitute or replacement gift. Poor Kerstin seemed to have at least one gift rejected every year until she came home as a college freshman with Notre Dame swag! She batted 1.000 that year. Let’s walk around to the back porch where the window is closer to the tree so that we can hear the banter a little better. Dad is still handing out gifts one at a time. You had to “ooo and ahhh” over everyone’s gifts and wait your turn. My folks were super generous; some years we would be at the gifting thing for hours. Oh my, it looks like it’s the Christmas with most famous “rejection” ever. Mom finally caved and got the boys jean jackets for Christmas.

But she brought the wrong jackets! Wrangler with fluffy lining instead of regular Levi’s. Randy opened his first and shook his head. “Really Mom?! This was the gift you couldn’t get wrong” as he pushed it back under the tree. Dad handed me an identical gift. I looked at Mom and raised an eyebrow. She nodded and I simply put it back under the tree. Everyone is laughing about it, even Mom. She felt so badly that for the first, and only time, she replaced the rejected gift, sending Randy to the mall to make the exchange. She didn’t even blink when he upgraded, coming home with Calvin Klein instead of Levi’s. Here, come a little closer and you can smell the bacon that Dad is cooking up in the kitchen.

Oh, you’re shivering. I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s so warm in there that, well, I can feel it even out here. Are you OK? I’d like to take you to one more Christmas home if you’re up for it. Yes? Great. Another quick walk, just around this corner. Ah, yes, here we are. 29123 Lincoln Road. My little family has landed in Greater Cleveland of all places. Each year our house would be decorated with Beth’s flair; sometimes even with colored lights in the bushes out front!

If we step up to the window over by Cliff’s house we’ll have a great view. There we are, Beth and I and our three kids. It looks like Danny is maybe 13 or so which makes Megan 11 and Randy 9. And whaddaya know, there we all are in the “dancing room”, our name for the living room pre-furniture, and sitting on the couch are my Mom and Dad, now Gram and Gramp! Kerstin lowered the boom on Gram after she decided that none of her children had adequately invited her and Gramp to spend the holidays with them and sulked off to NYC to see the Rockettes.

Hilariously describing their companions as “all the other parents whose children didn’t invite them for Christmas”!

We’ve come full circle. Thanks to Kerstin very fourth year we host my folks for Christmas. There I am (look how skinny!) handing our gifts one at a time. Oh, and no rejecting gifts in this house. Oh no! Beth always hated that little White Family quirk and put the kibosh on it at our first Christmas together. No matter, though. Come closer and put your ear up against the window. It’s cold, I know, but it’ll be worth it. That’s my Dad laughing! And Mom helping my Randy with a bow. In a minute or two I’ll head into the kitchen and fire up some bacon and 29123 Lincoln will be filled with all of the warmth of 30 Kirkbrae and 96 Lebanon. Gosh, it’s so good to see everyone, Mom and Dad, Gama and Gramp, my siblings, Beth and all of my kids…together and happy and warm. Those were good times, at home.

The windows seem to be getting blurry. No? Or maybe it’s me. Something in my eye, maybe. That must be it. I think it’s time I get you back home anyway. Get you warmed up, in case you might want to take a walk of your own. You know, a walk home. Home for Christmas. Christmas is a magic time, you know. Home will be just around the corner. I’m sure everyone is still there, at least today, on Christmas, waiting for you.

Merry Christmas…

*A respectful nod and thanks to the late Dick Feagler and his annual column “A Christmas Visit to Aunt Ida’s”.

“Santa is the Spirit of Giving. He is always real.” –Beth White

Once again Beth knocks it out of the park. We have a bunch of little ones again in our family, and because of that we will continue to have a healthy dose of Santa in our lives, at least for a little bit longer. While I realize that Beth and I will not really have a say in whether or not the whole Santa Claus story plays out in our grandchildren’s houses, what he stands for is important. Important enough for us to have had him in all his splendor and glory when our kids Danny, Megan, and Randy were growing up. Important for us to draw out the time before Randy came to the realization that Santa was not a real person for as long as possible, so deep was his love for the furry fat guy.

Rest assured, the parental units in our house did struggle with how to handle the inherent subterfuge that is necessary to have the Santa Claus story as part of our children’s upbringing. From the very beginning, though, the message was about the giving, about generosity and caring enough about someone else that you not only gave them a gift, but you gave them a gift that let them know that you “saw them”, showed them how much you cared about them. You know, the “spirit” in the Spirit of Giving, if you will.

No matter how you massage it, that day of reckoning when your child finally realizes that the character Santa Claus is nothing more than the figurative representation of that concept can be fraught with all kinds of emotional trauma. For sure you might get a dose of “you lied to me”, but in my now decades of experience being around parents it’s actually rather rare for this one to pop up. What you generally face is sadness, with maybe a touch of disappointment and even mourning tossed in just to add a little sting to the moment. Like so much else about parenting, or even just about kindness, these are times when you get to talk about and teach really important lessons. Here the lesson is about giving of yourself, with or without a physical gift to actually give.

While thinking about this we stumbled upon a lovely little story about how one family handled both the “Santa isn’t real” revelation and the “Santa is real” in spirit thing. Heck, the story may even be true! A Dad sensed that his son was pretty much on the cusp of discovering that the guy in the red suit wasn’t really the real deal. His approach? He talked to his son about how he sensed that he, the son, looked like he was not too sure about the Santa Claus character. The Dad complimented his son on being a caring young man: “Everyone who cares, who is generous can be a Santa. I’m very impressed by how kind you are. I think you are ready to become a Santa, too.”

The Dad went on to ask his son to think about someone in his world who looked like they were sad. Maybe a bit lonely even. He tasked the boy with thinking very hard about what that person might really like as a present. Something they needed, and something that would express that whoever gave it to them realized this need, and cared enough to give them a present that helped to meet that need. There was a catch, though: the recipient was never to know who gave them the gift. For the son the satisfaction was in the seeing and in the caring and in the giving, not in the recognition and praise that might follow.

It doesn’t really matter who the child chose or what he gave; you can trust that the story–true or not–is just lovely right to the end. What matters is that this very young boy is escorted through what can be a very sad stage in a young life by a caring and thoughtful parent. On the other side of this journey emerges a young man who has learned the true meaning of Santa Claus in the secular Christmas story. He has learned that what matters about Santa Claus is real indeed, and always has been.

Santa Claus is the Spirit of Giving. He will always be real.

I’ll see you on Christmas…

1) Book. It’s that time of year. The time of “Best of…whatever” in 2024. At the moment I’m thinking books. I really liked Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway on the fiction side, and I’m still mining nuggets, some of them gold, from “Outlive” by Peter Attia. How about you?

Not sure how you approach the “Best Of” lists but I’ve got the WSJ’s version next to me to help me plan my 2025. “The Anxious Generation”, “The Ministry of Time”, and “What If It All Goes Right?” are destined to join me somewhere, sometime this coming year.

2) Remontant. French: to rise again. Very specifically a term that refers to a plant that blooms more than once during the growing season. I really rather prefer the more poetic application as a descriptor of humans.

Who wouldn’t like to be thought of as “remontant”, blooming again and again as you enter each season of personal growth.

3) Exercise Rx. Up on my desktop I have an article I found that Alex Hutchinson references in the most recent issue of Outside Magazine: A Semiparametric Risk Score For Physical Activity. Man…so much math. Still, the outcome was pretty simple and straightforward:

15-20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day is the single most powerful variable that decreases all cause mortality and improves health through age 70 (the cut-off for the study). The effect kicks in at 12.5 minutes and there is no meaningful additional affect beyond 20 minutes.

Keep this in mind as we start our conversation about Healthspan.

4) Healthspan. That portion of your life that is unencumbered by the ravages of chronic disease. In short what we should be pursuing is not simply the extension of our lives in years, but an increase in both the number of years we live and how healthy we are while doing so.

Last week I spoke at my very favorite conference of the year. Cedars/Aspens is a small group of like-minded cataract and refractive surgeons who also spend time consulting and speaking for the various companies that make medicines and medical devices that we use in our jobs. In short most (but not all) of my closest friends in eyecare, both doctors and people who work in the industry, attend this meeting. Last night Beth and I hosted our annual Holiday Lasagna fest. 8 couples who raised their children together gathered at Casa Blanco to eat monstrous servings of Beth’s homemade lasagna, downing this bounty with Italian wine picked out by yours truly. This is my local circle of close friends, together in one way or another for almost 30 years now.

So what does this have to do with Healthspan? Well, these are two groups of people I like and care about. I gave a formal talk to the C/A group about Healthspan (from which this series will emanate), and introduced the concept to my friends over tiny tipples of Icewine (a dessert choice not exactly on point as we will see later on!). Helping my professional family live longer and be healthy enough to be productive until they hang up their spurs is immensely satisfying; if successful I can take a tiny bit of credit for all of their good works toward the end of their extended professional careers. Doing the same thing for my close friends is an entirely selfish endeavor: the longer they live and remain healthy the longer I will get to have them by my side.

And as we will see, doing that for and with my friends will very likely increase Beth’s and my Healthspans in the process!

As we move forward in this endeavor I will offer what I have come to think of as a series of invitations to inquiry. The slides for my talk are probably best described not as dissertations but something rather more akin to chapter titles and subtitles. It is certainly possible to begin one’s journey toward an enhanced Healthspan by simply following the stuff that I’ll talk about, but you are far more likely to succeed if you use my bit of drivel as a series of “starting gates” that launch you forward. Assessment, nutrition, exercise, exogenous elements, and well-being are on the menu. Honestly, I have no idea how many Parts are to come. I do know that each time I look at these things, and especially when I write or talk about them, I get better at doing my own work toward expanding my personal Healthspan.

And honestly, as directed-toward-self as that obviously is, the more selfish aspect of this effort, like my C/A talk and last night’s discussions over dessert, is that I am highly invested in YOUR Healthspan. The longer you live and the freer you are from the crappy stuff that comes from chronic disease, the more likely it becomes that we will be together.

And be happy!

I’ll see you next week…

“Enough is as good as a feast.” Sir Thomas Mallory in “Le Morte d’Arthur”

Welp, here we are on the last day of the Thanksgiving weekend, my favorite holiday of the year, careening toward Christmas, the polar opposite of holidays. Giving and receiving; wanting and needing. The season that epitomizes the mantra “the only thing better than enough is more.” More lights, a bigger tree, another dinglehopper for your collection. More that seems to beget, well, more. I sit here chuckling over my keyboard as I prepare to extol the opposite of more.

I’ve just spent more than an hour scrolling myself deeper and deeper into the rabbit’s hole of “Best Gifts for…” shopping lists.

Still, I think it bears stating that “enough”, at least here in the Western World, is a meaningful concept for contemplation in this, our most covetous of seasons. Let me stipulate at the outset that “enough” does not apply to everyone in the U.S. (or in the countries of the couple of you reading my drivel x-U.S.), but if you are reading my stuff it most likely applies to you. We could do worse than to return to the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence in which the forefathers of our nation declared the “inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The needs of a free people are encompassed in the first two of those, liberty and life. To be free of the tyranny of forced servitude. Access to food, shelter, clothing, and in our modern world access to some (albeit difficult to define) baseline level of healthcare. These I think we can reasonably agree are “needs”.

It is in the “pursuit of happiness” that we come acropper, both for ourselves and on behalf of others. We could call this column “wants”, those things that we desire, sometimes painfully so, that do not rise to the level of need. If we examine this through the lens of the food need, I believe that we can agree as an example that we need to consume protein. By and large the source of that protein is not a significant factor; we simply need protein to survive. The beef in a standard McDonald’s double cheeseburger is nutritionally no different from that to be found in Beef Bourguignon at your local French Bistro. We need protein; no one needs to have it come packaged by a Michelin-starred chef. Similar thought exercises exist for clothing and shelter. While considerably more complex, and beyond the scope of today’s “musings…”, the same applies to healthcare.

Which brings me back to “enough”. When you have enough, when your needs have been effectively covered, and a significant number of your wants likely handled as well, it becomes easy to see the brilliance of Mallory’s allegory. I imagine awakening to each morning, rising from my bed and beginning the new day as full as I was when I somehow managed to lift myself out of my chair after the Thanksgiving feast. I move into my day, and when I’m on my game I do a little bit of level setting on the want/need continuum. I admit that I can covet as well as the next guy, and that this is sometimes harder than other, but here’s what I learned once upon a time that helps:

Want what you have.

Really, I’m just everyone else, especially at this time of year. 60+ years of Christmas conditioning, both on the giving and receiving ends of the season. For example, I’ve been completely sure, totally and utterly convinced, that Beth and I need new phones and new laptops. Dead certain. Need. And so in preparation for those purchases, in order to “survive” until I ordered the new additions for my already Apple-cluttered universe, we updated all of the software and operating systems on our existing iPhones and MacBooks. Lo and behold, we were already in possession of “new” stuff. Sharper screens, faster processing, and battery storage all miraculously and dramatically better. Maybe not new stuff better, but way more than either one of us needs at this time.

Which leaves me quite content wanting what I have, and therefore on to the last of my three core beliefs about enough. This one a true core belief in general. One that has stood me well over the decades that have passed since I first found it and adopted it as my own from “The Tao Te Ching” and Lao Tse: the man who knows when enough is enough will always have enough. Think about it for a minute. You’ve figured out how much is enough. Every minute of every day is like having a seat at the banquet table. Each breath as filled with enough as Mallory’s feast. Sure, for all the work that you do wanting what you have, you can still have room for a bit of “want”. Kinda like an two scoops of ice cream or maybe a slice of apple AND pumpkin pie after the feast.

It’s OK. You know you don’t need it. You know you have enough.

Giving yourself the gift of enough, of knowing that you have enough, is perhaps the loveliest gift you can give not only to yourself but to those you love and who love you. Enough leaves you room for joy. Joy for you and for others. Enough gives you space to be grateful. Enough for you allows you so see first whether those you love have enough, and if they do it allows you to think of what they may want more than what you may want. You’re covered. You’re good. Enough is what let’s me pivot from the joy of family and friendship that I love so much about Thanksgiving to the joy that comes from the giving of the next holiday. Indeed, that particular joy may be the one thing outside of love that is the exception to all of what I think of when I think of “enough”. Thinking about that is why I’m still bathing the the glow of Thanksgiving on Sunday.

That, and the complete certainty that I have had enough pie.

I’ll see you next week…

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Has been forever. Food, family, and football. Each family had its own, unique take on the traditions of the day. Some had been passed down for generations, while others were seemingly created on the spot to mark generational change. Still, the constant was family. My beloved crowded tables in every house, everywhere. For decades change simply meant more loved ones around the table. All of the old traditions and rituals grew and embraced the newcomers, making room for whatever wonders they would add to the majesty of Thanksgiving.

It was so easy to think that it would last just like this forever.

And then, one day, you put down your glass and look up over the last of the pies made just like they’ve been made since forever, and you see it. An empty seat at your crowded table. When did THAT happen? How did that happen? Where did they go? It’s jarring, isn’t it? There are all kinds of things that leave a chair empty at Thanksgiving. Some of them are common, expected. Grandparents depart almost on schedule, usually just about the same time that you start to collect young in-laws. Sometimes this change is more like musical chairs than emptying chairs. For sure you miss the super-elders, even if you didn’t really prepare for missing them. The last one always seems the hardest, though; every White family table will see the empty chair left behind when my Mom passed in June.

It’s the ones we don’t really expect, the ones we didn’t really see coming that you just can’t not see. Family members misplaced or lost with or without warning, seats unexpectedly emptied. These you see, and depending on the why you might see them not just that first time but for something that feels like it might be forever. If you are very lucky your table continues to welcome newcomers, continues to grow. A child is born. A nephew or a niece have a new special +1 who comes along, choosing to join you at your special table. If you are very lucky this part of the table’s story continues for a very long time.

Still, for many of us, there is an empty seat across the table that we see each time we put down our glass.

What to do, then, at this time of joy? Of family and friends and the warmth of gratitude for both? How do we leave room for the love we have for whoever it was who sat in that seat for so long, who we miss so much, without letting our love or our loss dim the glow coming from all of the other seats that are still filled with love? Like pretty much anyone my age I now have my share of empty seats around my crowded table, at least of couple of which I still see. How do we feel all of the joy and as little sorrow as possible? I’ve been accused on occasion of being a bit, oh, preachy I guess, so rather than offering any suggestions why don’t I just tell you what I’m doing this year.

It’s all too easy to say don’t think about the empty seats, or the people I wish were still sitting in them, but to be honest I really WANT to think about them, and I do really wish that they were here. I miss them, and there is an emptiness that I feel inside that is just as real as the emptiness of their seats. And so I give myself permission to feel that, all alone while I take my morning shower. I think of them, think of how much I love or loved them, and allow myself to be sad that they are not here. All alone except for the memories I allow myself to grieve. Sometimes I cry, the sobs that wrack my body drowned out by the sound of the shower as I let the water wash away the tears.

And when I’m done, when I’m all cried out, all of my sorrow and all of my hurt washed away, I emerge ready for the love that awaits me at my still crowded table. I leave behind whatever sadness I felt and start my day being truly grateful that once upon a time those seats were filled. That the people who filled those seats meant something to me. Mean something to me. And I walk toward my table deeply thankful for each of them. That they had once upon a time filled one of the seats around my crowded table, and that we were happy together. I silently thank each one of them as I step into the embrace that Thanksgiving has brought once again.

May you feel the love that once filled any empty seats that might be there today. May your table be overflowing with love from each of the seats that that are full of those who’ve come to share your crowded table. May you be bathed in this love today, and every day.

And may you have sweet, sticky, peanut butter-filled dates covered in sugar!

I am grateful for each and every one of you who have ever spent a moment with me, here, in my Restless Mind. I’ll see you on Sunday…

1 Gulp. As in Big Gulp, the semi-famous brain freezing concoction sold at 7-Elevens nationwide. Did you know that they sold 153 million Big Gulps in 2023?

Not sure what to think about that, honestly.

2 Battitori. Name for the people in Italy who traipse through fields of Juniper beating the bushes with sticks to knock loose the berries used to flavor Gin.

Don’t know how you feel about this, but for Martini lovers world wide Battitori might as well be Italian for Hero.

3 Yiddish. Schlemiel: a klutz who trips and falls into a shrub, scaring a bird.

Schlimazel: the person the scared bird shits on.

Is there another language that does this, describes things like this in such a picture perfect way? Long live Yiddish.

4 Sequel. There is talk about a fourth season of Ted Lasso. Maybe even a movie. I’m more than a bit conflicted by this news. I openly admit that I thoroughly enjoyed Ted Lasso. All of it. In fact, I plan to make the Season 2 Christmas episode a part of my Holiday Season viewing rotation, tucked in there with Charlie Brown and Rudolph. Ted Lasso was a phenomenon. No one I’ve ever talked with was done with Ted when he left AFC Richmond to return to Kansas. Nick Mohammed, the actor who plays coach Nathan Shelley, is as pained as the rest of us: “I feel there are so many stories left to tell.”

Perhaps.

There were so many lovely moments over the 3 seasons of Ted Lasso. None was lovelier than the ending, though. After so very many beloved shows that ended with a fizzle, story lines dangling, adoring audiences left hanging as favorite characters were still adrift, the writers of Ted Lasso gifted us with closure. Almost across the board closure. And happiness, or at least happiness where happiness made sense. Where it belonged. Like the gift the show had been for all three seasons, all wrapped up and left for us with a bow.

Sequels and encores have historically been fraught. Some things are one-offs, especially when they are really, really good. For every Godfather 2 there’s been another lackluster Rocky 4 or Rocky 11. Spin-offs are problematic, too. I suppose Creed was a pretty good Rocky offspring as they go, but come on, does anyone think we needed more than one? Some shows simply shouldn’t be extended or have a reboot. Heck, some we all probably loved hung around a bit longer than they should have, no? I mean, can anybody say that Grey’s Anatomy has been as good since Meredith lost Christina to Sandra Oh’s ennui? Graceful exits (see what I did there?) and logical conclusions burnish not only the critical acclaim of these shows but also keep bright their shine in our memories. Could you ever imagine a new season, heck even a single episode of M*A*SH after watching Hawkeye fly over B.J. Honeycutt astride his motorcycle as he skidded around his farewell.

Admit it, even your memory of “Goodbye” from the air above the 4077th is blurred by the tears that streamed down your cheeks.

Ted Lasso was as nearly perfect as a TV show could have been. As much as I miss it, I’ll miss it so much more if extending its run dulls the glow we all felt, that we all see when we look back over those three precious seasons. When we can still see that handmade sign over the door. And that one, perfect, ending.

We, too, Believe.

Fare thee well, Ted.

I’ll see you in a few days on Thanksgiving…

“I’m in the twilight of my beauty. In a decade I’m going to need a lot of proof.” –Sarah Nicole Prickett

“I’m taking notes, Dr. White. Honest. I’m not just texting.” –Random Sales Rep

The question arises with some frequency: where do I find the topics on which I muse? In truth, most of the time “musings” arises from something that is either on my mind or in front of me just before I sit down to type. Oh sure, I occasionally have the foresight to jot down an idea or thought during the week, but as often as not I misplace a note as reliably as I misplace the memory of a really good idea.

If memory only did serve.

Last night was spent mostly in the company of a friend, The Dude, with whom I also do business. Sitting across from one another in a quite lovely restaurant we did just enough business to count, but mostly we just talked about our lives. I remember saying a couple of things that made me go:”Oh, that’ll make a great topic for ‘Musings'”; my friend made a point of identifying a couple for me. There’s this sense, this feeling, a kind of dim light in the mist of my morning mind that alerts me to the apparently fleeting existence of ideas I’m sure would have been brilliant once I’d committed them to electrons here, were they to have survived the night.

Alas, they did not.

I’m told that this need not be the case. Even as I hurtle through middle age, careening between the crevasses that keep cropping up in what was once solid (memory, muscle, et al), I’m told that I can remember everything if I want! Ms. Prickett would counsel judicious (one would hope) use of the “selfie”, the ubiquitous cellphone portrait or landscape that forever marks a visual memory. From there it would find it’s way to any number of memories. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever. Evidence freely shared that, alas, the twilight of my beauty has long since passed. If, that is, the sun ever shined there at all.

Random Sales Rep would show me his Evernote app, or some other portal to a virtual urn that I could fill with ideas that heretofore required either a more effective neural network or a more easily located notepad to ensure their survival. Once there I need only curate my little corner of the cloud. Just think of what Sunday musings could be if I could always remember everything.

Hmmm. About that.

You see, what I DO remember of last night is how I felt. How often and how easily both The Dude and I smiled. The mist that is so effectively hiding the more granular memories is actually emitting a rather warm glow. It’s much like the memories evoked as Mrs. bingo and I have unearthed the Kodachromes of our personal antiquity. They’ve faded, both the photos on paper and the finer details of that time the photo has frozen, but they, too, seem to evoke a glow within that is warmer for their lack of detail.

I think this is better. At least for me. What I might gain from the “selfie” or the endless shelf space of the cloud I fear I might lose in the feeling. You see, for all of the cracks that have appeared over time in my memory, it seems that I have retained a rather amazing capacity to remember feelings. Indeed, it almost seems as if my ability to recall emotion is enhanced by relying solely on what memory may lie only between my ears. What I remember of last night, without the aid of Evernote or Instagram, is that The Dude and I were really quite happy.

Give it a try.

I think about friendship a lot. Over the past couple of months I’ve experienced a huge slice of what we could think of as the contents of a desktop folder marked “friendship”. Good friends close by. Close friends a goodly distance away. Old friendships rekindled and newer ones revisited. And both, not, as well. Friends lost along the way glimpsed ever so slightly, reminding me that they, too, were once in at least one of my many circles of friendship. Perhaps the only classic friendship experience I’ve not had recently is the tragedy of losing a friend for whatever reason and by whatever route.

Big sigh of relief about that.

Beth and I are fairly well known as people who never consciously leave a friend or a friendship behind. It always makes us feel good when someone mentions that about us. As an aside, it’s always nice when folks you like think about you, or the version of you, that you like best, the same way that you do. Autumn is travel season for me. It seems as though we always find a reason to go somewhere or do something fun around this time. This year brought an epic family wedding in Maine; we are quite good friends with my siblings and their spouses. We would hang out with them all the time if we lived in the same area. It’s also the busiest time on my professional calendar. My biggest annual meeting was in Chicago this year. A couple dozen of my professional friends would be my very closest friends if only we lived closer to one another.

Unlike most times when I sit down to muse, especially if I’ve settle on a topic, I’m kinda all over the map on this one today. There’s so much to the topic, you know? Do I go back to the well on friendship levels? How important it is to have close friends close by as you get older, especially if you are a male? How about the important logistical details of a friendship and the mechanics of keeping it alive? All deeply important sub-topics for me, ones that I really enjoy exploring. I think I’ll fall back on my time-tested “Sunday musings…” strategy and ride the thought train that pulled into the station–my dining room table, that is–along with the weekend newspapers, courtesy of the columnist Rich Cohen:

How do you make a friend in the first place? How do you make a BEST friend?

Cohen’s article is titled “Luck of the Draw”. Sometimes you get born lucky. My folks presented me with a best friend when my brother Randy arrived, eventually to become my roommate for some 20 or so years. Cohen is thinking outside the family home as he compares and contrasts his experience as a freshman at Tulane with that of his son. Cohen senior had what anyone older than 40 would recognize as move in day as a college freshman: you discover who your freshman roommate is when the two of you walk into your room for the first time. “Hi, I’m Rich.” Contrast this with his son Nate who used social media to “curate” the process of “discovering” that freshman roommate: “Hey, I’m @Nate and I see you’re going to Faber, too.”

Cohen the Dad ended up with a close friend he seemingly found inconceivable in retrospect, so different were they in so many ways, while Cohen the son has chosen, and been chosen by, a carefully vetted doppelgänger. Rich had experiences with his roommate and the roommate’s buddies that he, Cohen, found unimaginable in retrospect. Will Nate’s experience be similar?

I guess lesson number one in Making a Friend 101 might be something along the line of “take a chance”. If you are in the middle of an experience that we could think of as uncurated, take a chance on the person who says “hi” back. Beth and I started a conversation with the couple who set up their beach chairs next to us on the first full day of our honeymoon, launching us on an epic week at “Camp for big Kids” in Jamaica. We are close friends with Dave and Suzi to this day. This winter we pulled off a pretty spontaneous weekend together on a beach far south of either of our homes. Our only regret is that none of us remember the rugby songs we sang in the swim up pool bar in Jamaica.

Outside of my family my very best friends arrived in similar, unplanned circumstances. Rob was introduced to me 2 weeks before we headed off to preseason football camp. Sadly, we weren’t roommates. Heck, we weren’t even in the same part of campus, let alone the same dorm. In a similar vein, Bill and Nancy are the couple version of our best friends. We have that wonderful friendship where husbands and wives like both husbands and wives. Beth and I met Bill and Nancy in graduate school, and as is the pattern in our particular world we went our separate ways for post-grad positions. It was the luck of the draw that landed us both in the same city some 30 years ago, a totally unplanned opportunity dropped in our laps and just sitting there waiting for us to take the reigns.

And there lies the second secret to making a friend: when a new friendship shows up, like a perfect horse all tacked up and ready to go, for goodness sake hop in the saddle! Take that friendship out for a ride. See where it takes you. Where you’d like to take it. Not every friendship can, or should, become a best friend or even a close friend, but who among us doesn’t have room for a new good friend or two. Or three. Some friendships are pretty easy, at least in the beginning. Kinda like a well-trained horse that doesn’t need a whole lot of riding, guidance, to give you a nice ride when you meet. But the best rides, like the best friendships, come from the effort you make to learn what kind of friend you can be. Where is the commonality, those areas where everything is in sync? What do you need to work on to keep the friendship growing?

I guess that’s it then. Sometimes I just need to sit down and start writing and what I was really thinking about just sort of finds its way onto the page. Friendship is equal parts serendipity and recognition that, you know, you’ve got a chance. Taking that chance, risking the possibility that you simply met an acquaintance but taking a chance and seeing if you’d both like to ride along in the same direction for a bit. Doing the stuff it takes to learn about your new friend and letting them learn about you. After that, who knows?

It’s been a busy Fall, like usual. I’ve spent time with friends older and newer, at home and away, and it’s been simply wonderful. What’s in store for me and my friends? For me and for Beth and the friends we have together? We are young yet. Might we be fortunate enough to expand our circles of friends? Heck if I know. We never let go of a friendship. Never leave a friend behind. Still, why not “take a chance”? You know, the luck of the draw. Perhaps a new friend.

You can never have too many friends.

I’ll see you next week…

1. Ideopolise. Post-industrial city wherein lives a populace driven only by ideas and feelings. Postulated as the home of cultural “elites” by Ruy Teixeira.

Should be a word.

2. Cultural Boutique. Safe space in afore-mentioned city. Also Teixeira.

Seems redundant.

3. Interregnum. A period of pause between two periods or eras.

No reason, just a super cool word.

4. Proximity. To greatness that is. What must it be like to spend your life in the presence or proximity of true greatness? I’ve long publicly held that I am not in possession of the genius gene. Rather I seem to have a rather dominant expression of the “Salieri” gene, that certain ability to both identify and promote the genius of another. Unlike the real Salieri I also inherited the gene that prompts me to protect any of those geniuses with whom I may come in contact (Salieri famously was said to have destroyed Mozart the man while promoting, and profiting from, his genius).

To be in the presence of the giants in any field is a privilege. In my day job I have reached a stage (I’m old enough) and have acquired enough status (a few people know who I am) where I occasionally share a stage with the giants upon whose shoulders we all ride. Just today I found myself sitting next to Marguerite McDonald, one of the pioneers in the tiny slice of eye care where I may have made my mark, and staring down at Dick Lindstrom in the audience, sitting in the front row. Not gonna lie, it was hard not to be a little bit starstruck up there.

Which makes me wonder what it must be like to spend your entire career recording the exploits and the thoughts on the same of some of the best “whatever” in the world. More than that, what if in so doing you become one of them, so good at how you let the rest of us into the world of whoevers, athletes or musicians, artists or scientists who are simply the best at what they do. Sometimes the best ever. Hemingway taught us about soldiers and war in his early works. Jimmy Chin and Jon Krakauer have likewise opened the eyes of flatlanders everywhere to what it’s like to stand on the top of the world. There’s really no one quite like that in the world of my day job recording the highlights of the Marguerite McDonald’s and Dick Lindstroms of my work world.

Pity, that.

Sportswriters are classic examples of individuals who spend their days in the presence of varying degrees of excellence. Of genius. Most give us a fair rendering of the facts, sometimes leavened by insight, but an occasional writer stands out among the others through their own sheer excellence. Grantland Rice, Red Smith, and Jim Anderson form a kind of Mt. Rushmore of pioneers. Perhaps Dan Deford and Bob Ryan belong there as well. If you follow athletics at all you have favorites. At some time, though, these men and women either pass from this life or simply pass from writing. My point, then, is a simple one: those who spend their working lives in the presence of other types of genius who are, themselves, the very best at putting together the words that let us, those who are at best a Salieri, see into the world of the best athletes, and should themselves be treasured. Recognized and enjoyed while they ply their gifts on our behalf. Their words, like “A Farewell to Arms”, will live on, but there is something special about reading those words when they are freshly off the pen or the keyboard of the living scribe.

Do yourself a favor. Pick up or surf to Sports Illustrated and read Tim Layden’s piece on Tommie Smith and John Carlos. It’s a story more than 50 years in the making that in the hands of Layden feels as fresh as last week’s news. Yet like so many of Tim’s pieces you know that it will feel just as important 5, or 10, or 50 years hence. Read it and be in the presence of greatness.

I’ll see you next week…

No wonder Sunday’s musings sounded so familiar! Looks like I was thinking the same thoughts 6 years ago, just, you know, thinking them better. Here you go…

“…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” –George Elliot (HT to my friend Bruce K.)

We in the U.S. have been bombarded of late with missives that declare that we are living in “historic times”, that we have a “historic opportunity” to participate in an election that will “determine our fate as a country in historic ways.” But is that really so? Are we truly at an altogether unique inflection point, one so different from all that have come before that our fate, our daily experiences to come will be affected in ways that we cannot miss or ignore? Or is this particular upcoming election simply the next in an unbroken series of political or governing evolutionary steps that has been unbroken since the end of the Civil War? Is the excitement and the drama simply an extension of the “Techquake” and its always on firehose of information?

Seriously now, if you are one who is on your soapbox (facing in either direction), are you really telling us that Election Day is going to change our nation to a greater degree than the one that brought us 4 years of LBJ and the Great Society?

As a people the citizens of the developed world have been swept along in the great rivers of effluent poured forth from that firehose of information that was spawned by the internet. Have we forgotten the accuracy and truthfulness of Elliot’s words? If so is it because we simply cannot get even a single pupil above the torrent of information to see what he saw? Or is it more that we have lost the ability to paddle even the tiny amount necessary to do so? No matter, the result is the same.

Literary fiction is taught as the study of quiet acts of desperation and the fall-out that follows. Life, on the other hand, is made up of quiet acts made out of sight of nearly everyone. Anonymous acts carried out with neither malice nor benevolence. These are what constitute the reality of life. It seems to me that at least a (very loud) portion of our people have lost the appreciation of this reality. For them each act is either an affront or a tiny step toward canonization. I do not believe they are correct. Elliot is only wrong in that he underestimates his object; that things are not so ill with you and me, is not half but mostly owing to those who lived that faithful life.

To what, then, is this anonymous majority faithful? This is quite simple, and because this is so it is all the more painful that it must be pointed out: they are faithful to one another. They live lives that are faithful to the belief that it is another person with whom they are living, not an opinion or a belief. This anonymous mass lives lives that are intertwined with other people, not other opinions. When they look to their left or to their right what they see is not a position or a platform, but a person. It is this, the acknowledgement that we are surrounded first by other people, that leads to salvation in this life.

You are surrounded by people who are faithfully living quiet lives, anonymous to all but a handful of others, whose lives will be remembered by even fewer, if at all. Unbeknownst to one another they likely crossed paths with someone with whom they would find little common ground in belief, someone who is close to you, about whom you care very much. Despite this lack of commonality the crossing was uneventful. It was peaceful. On balance it was marked by quiet goodwill, if it was marked at all. It was a moment that will have passed directly into an unvisited “tomb” in the memory of each of these individuals.

And yet it was that quiet faithfulness that behind whatever disagreement might exist between the two there lived much more than another opinion or belief. There lived another person. Another person living a life largely unnoticed, hopefully a quiet one with less desperation than more, on their way to an end noticed by few and mourned by fewer still. Lives that were lived in the faith that there exists much, much more good in others than not.

A faith that we, the living, must endeavor to keep.

I’ll see you next week (which will surely arrive, regardless)…