Ode to Rex and Muriel

Today, I'm thinking a lot about a guy named Rex, and how there really are no ordinary people.

Rex was part of the Greatest Generation, one of hundreds of thousands of boys from the Midwest who put their lives on hold for four or five years to fight World War II. Back then service to your country was a proud calling, and most young men were less afraid of war than of the shame of not doing their part. 

I'm not sure, but I think Rex was an infantryman, and I think he served in the European Theater of Operations. That would have put him right in the meat grinder, in the front lines at places like Nancy and Aachen and the Argonne Forest. His service ended when a sniper shot him in the neck, and he carried the bullet there until the day he died.

Rex came home, married his sweetheart, Muriel, and went back to farming. He grew corn and fed hogs and carried mail his whole life, and raised two sons and a daughter. She was an athlete and a cheerleader and pretty much the life of her high school class, and odds are good she ran Rex and Muriel ragged for a few years. The oldest son was steady, it seems, but from what I hear the youngest was a wild one. 

In the end, it was cancer that got Rex and Muriel both, and they died within months of each other. That was last year, a tough year for the family. The younger son, Jim, just didn't know what to do with it, and this weekend he chose to take his own life. His wife came home from work and found him in the recliner with a bullet hole in his head. His funeral is tomorrow.

I didn't know Rex or Muriel, or Jim. I heard their story this morning when I got to work, told in compassionate detail by another not-so-ordinary person. Rick is a part of that backbone of America that does shift work, clocking in every morning to make the goods that drive our economy, putting in ten solid hours a day at a job the world scorns. Like many of his kind, he's a tough guy, and life hasn't given him reason to expect much. He's closing in on 60, but this morning I realized that, like all of us, he still thinks he's young.

Rick stopped me to ask for time off for the funeral, but he got to talking about growing up across the street from Rex and Muriel, of the crush he had on Jim's sister, and of the trouble he and Jim got into. 

He described the day Rex and Muriel moved, within a year of their deaths, to be closer to the cancer center where they were receiving treatments. He told how when he knocked on Rex's door, there were tears in the eyes of that once-capable soldier, now an old man whittled down to 120 pounds by an enemy he couldn't fight with his hands, when he realized that he didn't have to pack the moving van by himself.

He described too the hug he finally got from the sister he'd admired from afar, a hug of gratitude that meant more to him than the hot flame of passion might have. And he got a little angry with Jim for taking the easy way out, in Rick's view, and leaving so many people with so much grief and so many questions. According to Rick, he sure never learned to give up from Rex.

Rex and Muriel and Jim and Rick would be called ordinary people by some, but not by me. These are my people, just small town folks trying hard to be good citizens and good parents and good partners to the spouses we committed to as kids. We shop at Target and think a night out at The Olive Garden is a big deal; we go to work every day and pay our taxes and spend our evenings at middle-school band concerts and high school baseball games. We're not rich, but we have enough, and we have some things not even Warren Buffett could buy.

When we look at the people society idolizes, sometimes it seems like the world is going crazy. We see Paris Hilton being famous just for being famous; we watch Lindsay Lohan and wonder why her folks didn't love her enough to spank her. We see philandering athletes and crooked CEOs, and philandering, crooked celebrities, and self-starved fashion models wearing what looks to us like Saran wrap and feathers.  We see all these people the world reveres, and we shake our heads, say a prayer for our kids, and get back to work.

Because that's all a long way away and there are folks on our own street who need a helping hand, and there are people in our church who need a meal brought in, and there's volunteer work to be done at the local park. Our schools and towns and neighbors need us, and we need them. Individually we're the little people, but together we've built a marvelous thing: The American small town, that place of Mayberry RFD and Green Acres, where if you leave your glasses at the Post Office they know they can probably catch you at the grocery store.

By today's definitions Rex wasn't much of a success, but he was man enough to volunteer for something most are too scared to do, and he was man enough to be faithful to his wife for a lifetime. Muriel probably didn't show much skin or have her tummy tucked, but she kept the love of her husband and kids until the day she died. I live with hundreds of Rexes and Muriels, not-ordinary people living extraordinary lives, and I wouldn't trade them for any number of Derek Jeeters or Charlie Sheens or Rick Perrys or Barbara Boxers. 

You see, the rich and powerful think they don't need anybody else.  I'd rather have neighbors who will swap fresh vegetables with me and let my grandsons play on their swing sets. Here in flyover country we intentionally entangle our lives, so much so that we can hardly live without each other. We laugh and work and fight in groups. And we never have to cry alone.

Hater?

There's a man in Connecticut who thinks there's something wrong with me. I wonder if he's right.

This guy took issue with my use of the word "hate." He argued that there is nothing in the world we should hate; that hatred is just a choice to invest in negative energy instead of positive. I promised to think about it; I have, and I still disagree. But maybe I have to, because there are so many things I do hate. 

I hate terrorism. I've hated it since October 1982, when I was in Germany as part of the semi-annual ReForGer exercise we did to show the Soviets how quickly we could put boots on the ground in Europe. Back then, terrorists weren't Muslim extremists, they were mostly communist groups like the Red Army Faction. That was the group that killed a young soldier in Munich; a woman promised him sex and lured him into an alley, where they cut his throat. They killed him for his ID card, which they used to try to get a bomb onto an air base. I didn't know him, but I saw him at his worst, laying there in the garbage and blood with his fly open.

I did know Marilyn Gabbard; I met her shooting pool when she was a Specialist and I was an Officer Candidate. We crossed paths a lot on the way up, and when I had my battalion, she was Command Sergeant Major in a sister battalion. I knew CW4 Smith. I remember when he lost the engine on his Huey with some general on board and auto-gyroed it into a wheat field from 1,300 feet and everyone walked away. Or so the story goes; I heard it a dozen times over beers at the Officer's Club. They both were killed in Iraq; ironically I have a memory of being at a Dining In with SGM Gabbard when we raised our glasses to fallen comrades, not long before she shipped out. I'm not so sure we weren't toasting Smitty, but it could have been any of a handful of other Iowa troops we all knew.

And I hate drugs. I hate the way they wreck lives; I hate the stupid things people do because of them. Maybe that's because of the man who traded his 16-year-old daughter for meth. Maybe it's the young lady who was stripping and hooking to pay for her habit -- her gimmick was using her uniform. Maybe it's the guy who took his M113 through a bivouac area without a ground guide during Wounded Warrior III at Fort Hunter-Ligget, California (they shot MASH there, did you know that?) and crushed a soldier in his sleeping bag. Maybe it's the cook I found in Holland, passed out in his own puke in the dumpster he'd hidden in to shoot up.

I hate what the world thinks about sex. I hate it when I'm packing up the personal effects of a suicide and find gay pornography, which by law I'm supposed to send back to his mother (I didn't). I hate it when I have to court-martial a combat vet who exposed himself to grade-school girls. I hate it when an officer degrades the uniform by coming home from Iraq, where there aren't a lot of blonde women to be had, with $10,000 she earned on her back.

None of those things were great personal tragedies; the people were colleagues, not friends, and the responsibilities were professional. But each of these events, and others like them, put another nick in the lens through which I look at life, so that now the world I see is significantly less beautiful than the one a lot of people live in.

What those events did was prove to me, one data point at a time, that while life where I live is mostly sunshine, there is darkness out there. This world has some negative energy too. The old word for it was evil; these days we call it dysfunction or sickness or an alternative lifestyle.

It's the evil that I hate. The question is, do I also hate people? Do I hate terrorists? Do I hate drug dealers? Do I hate pimps and pornographers? I hope not; I don't want to. I can honestly say I've never hated anyone I've met face-to-face. But I never met Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden, so I guess I don't really know.

There's one being I know I hate: The Father of Lies. He's the one who did all of it. He's the one who makes people think these are good ideas. And he's the one who convinces people that there's nothing to hate.

All this hatred . . . does it mean I'm evil too? If I let the hatred dominate, it might. But everything I hate is because of something I love even more strongly. Ultimately, I'm a lover, not a hater. At least, that's what I want to be.

I read this morning that these three remain: Faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. The love will be there when the hatred is gone. That's as good a definition of heaven as I need today.

Writing

[Biographical note: I worked my way through college as a journalist, earned a BA in English, and assumed at that point I would always earn my living by writing. Somewhere along the way the need to feed a family pushed me onto another path, and I discovered skills that proved more valuable in the marketplace. But . . .]

Sometimes I hate being a writer. Often I deny that I am one.

But denying the truth doesn't make it go away, and the truth is, I can't not write. Even when I'm disgusted with it, even when no one reads it or even has a chance to read it, I write.

I write to think. Something can be a jumbled mess in my mind, but if I write it, thoughts flow, connections become apparent, logic asserts itself and, in the end, there is a conclusion. Sometimes I advance through the day in a kind of solo social media experience, wherein I'm constantly adding comments and updating my status as a way of clarifying these new ideas that keeping boiling out of my brain (picture the centipedes coming out of the old tree trunk in the movie version of Fellowship of the Ring).

And most days I churn out pages of business writing. That's the art at its most workmanlike, leading out words like draft animals to be put in harness in e-mails, memos and reports that attempt, as mundane as they may be, to be true to the capacity of the English language not just to communicate but to stimulate. It's like singing opera in a honky-tonk.

But in addition to those functional uses for writing, I have this need to sculpt words. I'm long past the days when I got paid to write -- in fact, my current career field values writing only if it is terse and unambiguous. But that doesn't stop me from sneaking away now and then to romp through the playground of language like a schoolboy playing hooky. Words have meaning. Years ago in my Infantry Officer Advanced Course one of my Tacs was fond of saying "Use precise terms precisely;" in that world, where decisions are made on the fly and sometimes under fire, the job of words is to transmit information efficiently and accurately. But words can do much more than that; in addition to their Webster definitions, they are nuanced, and they have shapes and sounds that combine to evoke for me colors and flavors and textures and tones. Writing can be like cooking and painting and singing all at the same time.

That's why I often return to authors whose stories I find ordinary (Neal Stephenson and James Lee Burke come to mind) but who regularly craft sentences and paragraphs that are so exceptional that reading becomes the mental equivalent of fine dining. 

And it's also why, without encouragement or affirmation, I continue to write. True, some of my writing escapes in the form of the occasional blog, and a few of those are well-received. However, most of what I write never matures enough to be released into the wild. That majority is, I think, what makes me truly a writer, because it exists only to give expression to the impulsive/compulsive something in my heart that demands a voice.

If I were a professional writer, some of that work would eventually be scrubbed and fashionably dressed and then sent out with a polished resume to look for a job. It is the curse of my success in other fields that there isn't enough time.

But I write anyway. I write, and I get frustrated because I start but don't finish. I write, and then file what I've written because it is poor work done with the dregs of my energy and creativity. I write and become depressed because this is what I love but there's so little time for it, and so little progress. It seems futile, my own rolling of the stone uphill. 

So, just like the day I stopped being paid for it, I decided again this summer to quit writing -- like a smoker, I've quit frequently over the years. But even so, last week I finished another chapter in The Great American Novel, and I also drafted the outline of another speech. And today there's this blog, more expository than beautiful but still, for all its unimportance, an outlet.

That's how, even though the world sees me as something else, I know I'm a writer.

The third option

As I was playing a computer game last night, I wondered, how many game writers are older than 30? I wondered that because all the plot lines wallowed dramatically in either ecstatic delight or tragic despair. There was no third option.

I connected that to the age of the writers because one thing you realize as you age is that very little of life consists of the two extremes. Usually you experience something in the middle that's more mundane. For example:

Relationships. The young writer would have us believe that all love affairs either A. end tragically through death, kidnapping, serial unfaithfulness or because your lover is secretly a sleeper agent of a foreign government who cares only about your total subjugation (or alternately an incubus, succubus or maybe just a bus driver with amnesia and a wife and 12 kids in Toledo) or, B. are a never-ending magic carpet ride of fireworks and love-drunk, euphoric perfection in which you and your soul-mate, completely in sync on all things, romp through life (which always looks like a meadow filled with daisies) hand in hand. The third option: You meet the love of your life, get married, realize that true love hasn't eliminated stinky laundry or dirty dishes, find out that when your spouse gets up three times during the night with a puking kid she looks like death warmed over and has an attitude to match, learn that for a while kids and jobs and housework are going to take your partner's complete attention, and then discover when the nest is empty that this person who weathered the storms and moved the mountains with you is not only extremely competent but also funny, intelligent, attractive and all in all a great life partner.

Conflict. When faced with an adversary, the typical game writer works with only two options: A. Kill it, or B. run awaaaaay! They never explore the third option, which starts with you holding up your hand and saying, "Dude, what's the big problem?" and ends with a benefit waffle breakfast raising funds to get his unjustly-accused son a better lawyer and help with his drug addiction.

Money. In computer games, there are only two levels of income: A. below poverty level, requiring your children to beg and you to sell your plasma and grocery-shop in the dumpster behind the Chinese restaurant or B. astronomical, funding multiple homes, a zeppelin, your successful research into immortality, and your secret life as a super-hero. Unfortunately, most of us live with the third option, which is a progression from "barely enough" through "enough" to "enough to save for retirement."

Of course, the third option doesn't make for great game play. Questgiver: "Well, I was hoping to marry young Bonnie Rae Belle but raiding orcs took her away to cook and eat her, so while I wait for someone new to come along, I'm trying to save a little money. Maybe you could help by hauling my harvest to market." Quest objective: Drive the wagon-load of pumpkins into town. Quest reward: Three dollars and forty cents, everything the Questgiver had in his pocket, plus an offer of more freighting work the next time you pass through.

So you can see why those writers write the way they do -- because that's what young gamers find engaging. If they were writing for me it would be different. A hero my age would figure, hey, a quiet wagon ride wouldn't be so bad, it's a nice day and the leaves are starting to turn, and I can always grab a cup of coffee and some pie when I'm in town. Fighting orcs is a lot of work, plus afterward you have to pay the doctor and clean your weapons, and by the time I got Bonnie Rae back she'd probably have a few bites taken out of her and wouldn't be quite the prize she used to be. And three bucks is three bucks, after all. Plus it gets me home in time for the news.

The problem with only two options, though, is that after operating for a while at the polar extremes of dramatic possibility, everything gets boring. Pretty soon all the distressed damsels start to blur together, killing monsters, even when they come in waves, is just another boring chore, and the imminent destruction of the kingdom occurs with such regularity that you just put "Save kingdom" in your planner for Wednesday afternoons.

You want real drama? Try de-conflicting the holidays with two different families demanding your attendance on Christmas Eve. Try figuring out how to watch Jimmie's AAU game, pick Jennie up from dance class, get enough groceries to put a reasonable dinner on the table, and do it all without leaving work early. In real life, there's not only a third option, there's an infinite pallet of possibilities and hazards, most of which are impervious to even your most potent fire spell.

Maybe that's the attraction of computer games; compared to our real lives, clearing the skeletons out of the citadel seems comfortably easy, low-stress even. Someday, when these writers approach 50, maybe some of that will show up in computer games. Maybe we'll get to ram drivers who steal our parking spots, and toss snotty DMV clerks down the steps.

No, that's probably not a good idea. It's probably better to play the games as they are, and think a little bit about all the ways that worldly problem solving reflects our unwillingness to rely on the One who controls it all. And while we're at it, to reflect on why we think we need so much drama for things to be interesting. After all, our own lives are the greatest drama ever written; there's a cataclysmic supernatural battle going on over our souls, and we're tasked every day to fight and defend and rescue. If we signed up for more of that, maybe we'd have less of an appetite for virtual drama.

Old boots

A lot of ordinary things really aren't. Know how I know? Combat boots.

In a piece of fiction I once described something as "ordinary as an old boot." I thought of that recently when a picture of me showed up briefly on a National Guard website. It was a black-and-white snapshot taken at Grafenwohr, (West, at the time) Germany during one of my several REFORGERs, and what caught my eye was the combat boots I had on. They were the old style, the pair issued to me in 1980 in Basic Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Back then, the uniform was olive drab, not camouflage, and the boots were black.

What surprised me was that I instantly remembered every detail of those old boots. They were still black the day I threw them away, but only through a soldier's discipline. The leather was soft, but badly scuffed and cut. Most of the paint was worn off the eyelets, so they showed brass instead of black. The soles were faded to gray and worn smooth. Just an old pair of boots -- there have to be thousands just like them in attics across this country.

I remember clearly the first day I wore those boots. Our drill sergeant used a garden hose to fill them with water; his theory was that by marching them dry we would break them in in one day. As things turned out, I would march them dry frequently that summer, as we trained in the rain and in rivers and squelched down mud-puddled trails.

Dig around the tongues of those boots and you might find grass seeds from Korea, bug parts from Panama, pastry frosting from Belgium and dust from maybe 30 states. I wore them for about 15 years, in rotation with a couple of newer pairs. Me and those boots did most of the things soldiers can do. A lot of them I'm proud of, but some things, not so much. Some I still can't talk about; some I just won't.

I wish I still had those boots. They were a floppy, beat-up, sweat-stained scrapbook full of memories. That cut on the left toe? Busting brush with a machete is harder than it looks. The chip out of the boot heel? The rope was shorter than the cliff. The missing corners on both tongues? Field-expedient rifle-cleaning patches. The dark smear along the side of the sole? Don't ask.  

Those boots, in my memory anyway, capture the essence of my career. A lot of it was just training, but some of it wasn't. A few times I was aware of being involved in something significant, but most of the time it was just more duty in another obscure corner of useless geography. Some of the ops did what we planned them for, some didn't. At any one point, it didn't seem like much, but put it all together 25 years later and it spans Grenada and the Cold War and Panama and Somalia and both Gulf Wars. It's kind of impressive, even though I shouldn't be the one saying so.

I think our lives are like that; I'm not sure there's such a thing as an ordinary life. The locations might be just plain vanilla and the days might seem pretty mundane, but live enough of them and look what happens. Look at all those students taught or cars fixed or books read, look at what the kids grew up to be, look at the things you know and the places you've been and the wonders you've seen and the lives you've changed.

My grandpa was a farmer, retired for most of my memory. He was about as ordinary a man as you'd find, which means not very. He was a locally-renowned baseball pitcher who snuck off the farm to play on Sundays, a young hellion who drove way too fast. He was famous for his strength -- they said he could grab a bull by the horns and back it up. He plowed his fields with horses, and then tractors; he told of the day it rained frogs and fish; he remembered the first car ever bought in the county. Grandpa loved God, and he loved singing hymns. Even at the very end when he couldn't see or stand or even hold his head up, he still sang. I only realized when it was too late that he was one of the most fascinating people I knew.

It makes me think I should spend more time appreciating my life and less time wishing it was different. It makes me wish I had the trust of King David, who thanked God in Psalm 16 by writing, "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." It makes me hope my kids will be smarter about it than I was.

The odds of that seem pretty good.

Respect - The Lesson of the Flags

Why does it seem that the most respected people don't care if they are, while others crave respect?

Respect is a complicated thing to get, in both the blonde and Rodney Dangerfield senses of the term. But earning it is critical personally and professionally.

These ruminations started this weekend when I was on a college campus and noticed that, while the US and state flags were at half-mast in honor of a fallen soldier, the Canadian flag was still flying high. I was taught that, on American soil, nothing flies higher than Old Glory.

Now, it's possible that Canada has claimed some sort of ambassadorial presence on campus, in which case it seems appropriate that the flags were flying in front of the cafeteria. But more likely someone made a mistake. Either way, it could be seen as disrespectful.

In younger years my response would have been immediate and hotblooded and, therefore, probably un-helpful. Instead, I found myself engaged only on an intellectual level. In other words, I didn't care an awful lot.

I didn't care because it felt to me something like a grown man letting his little brother sit in the driver's seat. I mean, does anyone think for a minute that the relative heights of our flags somehow meant we couldn't beat up Canada if we wanted to? It seemed like the kind of gentle indulgence the strong can afford.

But even though fear is a form of respect, it's not really respect if people act deferential just because you're bigger. Respect has more to do with agreement with or admiration for your values and actions. Every time some jobless teen-aged punk with his pants around his thighs and his hat on cockeyed gets in someone's face and says, "Don't dis me," I think, "Why, because you've done so much to earn our respect?" Fact is, I do dis him, because being tough isn't all there is to it.

So it's possible that the position of the flags was intended as disrespect. Even so, it's hard to see how that would improve if I got on my high horse and started firing off nasty-grams to everyone on campus with a public e-mail address. Being prickly doesn't seem like the right strategy to gain respect.

Besides, the flag itself is important only as a symbol. I put in a career in uniform based in part on the idea that people, even if they think differently than I do, should be free to express themselves in any legal way. To me, the fact that you can pour red paint on a flag in this country without the police playing the Symphony of the Batons on your head is all the proof you need that we are indeed the land of the free. In that context a paint-covered flag becomes a symbol of our tolerance and long-suffering. At half mast, beneath the Canadian flag, it seemed to me to be symbolic of our gentlemanly ability to not stand on our rights when it isn't important to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

To the extent we in our superior strength can continue to exhibit those traits of long-suffering, tolerance and chivalry, we will hold the respect of the world. If we start to default on our loans, throw our trash in other peoples' back yards, and beat up other countries for their lunch money, we won't.

It's good to remember that, be they flag or cross or corporate logo, whatever meaning our symbols have is derived from the actions we take in their name. That means that even in demanding respect we can diminish it. In that context we do well to think about our own names as symbols of our own personal brands. Do they garner respect? If not, why not? The answer has nothing to do with rank or wealth or power.

It's not unlike what Margaret Thatcher said about being a lady: If you have to tell people you're one, you aren't. In the same way, if you have to demand respect you don't have it. And you're not going to get it by flexing muscles or legalities. You get it by taking the high road, by behaving decently and honorably.

Hmmm . . . I'm beginning to see the problem As with so many other things, could it be we want the payout without putting in the work? Maybe we think people should respect us just because we're us, not because we've done anything in particular to earn it. That's true in a spiritual sense: We all have value derived from being made in the image of God, so we all deserve respectful treatment. But that general respect we extend to fellow humans as basic courtesy is different than being respected for the individuals we have become.

With all that said, I do think the things the Stars and Stripes stand for are worthy of respect, and I think for the most part our flag is respected around the world. And that's exactly why I'm willing to let this slight go by uncontested, whether it was an ignorant mistake or intentional raspberry. Because magnanimity is far more respect-worthy than virtuous self-righteousness.

Taxes

Guys, I hate to say it, but we need to pay taxes. And I think we need to pay more.
Call the medics for all those members of my Republican party who are currently coughing up a lung. And please don't think I've fallen under the sway of the evil liberals.
First off, none of the liberals I know are evil. But even if they were actually evil instead of just wrong, I'd be with them, at least partly, on taxes.
Maybe it's because around here we mostly pay as we go, but it seems like a pretty simple equation: Money in must be greater than or equal to money out or you pile up debt.
I know, a lot of America believes that money in only needs to be equal to the minimum monthly credit card payment, and even then you can always go to one of those debt consolidation places if things get too bad. But let's make believe for a minute here that the idea is to balance the checkbook, not just pile up stuff.
So anyway, if you have too much debt, you can't borrow anymore. And if you wait too long to pay your debt, the Sheriff comes and tells you your creditors get your stuff.
That's basically where we find ourselves as a nation. Too much debt, we can't pay it, and we're getting close to the point where China is going to want New Jersey.
OK, bad example. No one's going to complain if we lose New Jersey. But what if it was something we cared about, like the Mall of America?
I've been in debt, I'm currently not. I know what it took to get out of debt; I know what it takes now to stay debt-free. And I don't get how we can simply repeat "No taxes. No taxes" while we reel ever closer to the abyss.
Any person with reasonable math skills and a little rudimentary knowledge of our national budget knows that the only way we're going to get on top of this is with a combination of new taxes and spending cuts. Neither on its own is going to get us there.
OK, medics, haul out the defibrillator, because I'm about to cause more trauma to the GOP faithful: I'm inclined not to vote for any candidate who signs the Tea Party pledge. Not that I don't have some sympathy for their cause. It's just that their pledge is so rigid; it doesn't allow for changing circumstances. I think it's out of touch with reality because it allows only one option for four years of unknowns. And a candidate who signs it is either just as out of touch, or is a cynical manipulator doing what needs to be done to get votes. Either way, that's not my guy, or gal, as the case may be.
I'm looking for the one who says, "Look, I'm going to do what I can to keep a lid on taxes, but we're going to need more money if we want to keep a strong defense and keep Social Security intact." That's the only reasonable answer there is.
And I'm OK with that; in fact, I'm OK with paying more. They say the per capita share of our national debt is $2k each - I'd write that check today if a responsible government asked me to.
Until we Republicans are willing to say, "Hey, go ahead, cut the defense budget, and here's a couple more things we're willing to do without," then our choices are limited: more debt, or more taxes.
So I have a simple request for my party: Try an actual dialogue. Negotiate. Give and take. Work something out. We did it with the Koreans and the Russians and the Taliban. Surely we can do it with fellow Americans.

Truth

Nothing is as hard to hunt down as the truth. Like the elusive South Dakota jackalope, it's impossible to spot in the wild, and the ones people try to sell you are fakes, cobbled together from bits and pieces of reality.

When you want the truth about something, where do you look?

Where is the truth regarding government and public employee unions? One side says the unions are milking the states dry; the other says union members are underpaid. And both sides are convinced, or at least want us to be, that the very future of the Republic depends on what happens in Wisconsin. I'm disturbed that we left the future of the Republic laying around where Packer fans could get their hands on it, but no one else seems alarmed so it's probably OK.

What's the truth about Halliburton - evil corporate money-grubbers or courageous humanitarians? Depends if Dick Cheney is actually as wicked/wonderful as your party portrays him. Can health care reform work? Are Libyans capable of democracy? Will the iPad 2 make me happier?

The truth is hard, because it seems so subjective. I see tan, my wife says taupe. But next time it's not taupe, it's ecru. Or, in the case of hosiery, nude, which is a color you'd think guys would recognize immediately and women would disapprove of. You can measure all of them with a computer and place them precisely in the color space, but that means we're reduced to taking a computer's word for it. That's only slightly better than believing our spouses.

More than that, sometimes the truth seems unknowable. Yeah, FatSecret says an apple has 71 calories, but some apples are bigger, but then sometimes I don't eat as close to the core, so . . . .  And did I really burn 450 calories on that run? I'm in pretty good shape, and that distance should be easier for me than some fat guy who's been on the Lazyboy workout plan for the last decade, so when they say it should burn X, which of us are they talking about? In the end, did I have a calorie deficit or surplus yesterday? How do I really know?

Yet some people seem to know. Rush Limbaugh is pretty confident he does; so is Charlie Sheen. How do those people know? How could celebrities tweet the "truth" about Bahrain when reporters couldn't get into the country? How can Westboro Baptist Church know without doubt what God is doing?

Most of the time, except for a few things that are absolute, I'm not confident I know what the truth really is. But I am confident that there is objective, unequivocal truth. I'm not supposed to be. I'm supposed to believe we're all free to find our own truth; I'm supposed to tolerate whatever nonsense anyone else wants to put out there.

Well, folks, here's a tip: Denying the truth doesn't change it. He can say Obama isn't an American citizen, she can believe chupacabras are killing motorists in Texas, you can claim the Masons control a secret world government, I can call cookies health food. I can say it, swear to it, and believe it to my dying day but that will not change the truth, no matter how many people I point to who claim to have lost 45 pounds and cured their diabetes with an all-Keeblers diet.

The truth is out there. I believe Jesus when he said he is the way, the truth and the life; a lot of people don't. That just proves that relativism doesn't work: if we believe mutually-exclusive things then we can't both have found the truth. Alternate reality was cool on The Matrix, but life doesn't work that way.

I guess I'm suggesting that we should all be seekers for truth. Instead of thoughtlessly re-tweeting or forwarding the chain e-mails or propagating any of the propaganda that pollutes our conversational space, let's take the time to be informed of the facts and to examine the data. And then let's discuss. I promise to listen before I decide; I hope you'll do the same.

Doors

[Disclaimer for brother Eric, on the off chance he might actually check this out: This is not about a classic rock band, or any Jim Morrison conspiracy theories.]

I photograph doors. Proportionately, a lot of them.

This quirk became evident recently, when I spent part of a sick day flipping through electronic photo files. I noticed that in almost all my folders, be they of Europe or Texas or family or even just downtown, tucked between snaps of the beefeaters and Lady Di's fountain would be an image of some random door or gate. Since I rarely take the time to label things, I have only the foggiest recollection of where these doors are, but I still find them compelling. 

I wonder why. I'd like to say it reveals something deep and significant, like maybe that I embrace change, or I'm always ready to pass on to that next stage in life. I suspect the truth to be something less positive (nosiness?).

There's a certain sense of mystery to doors. An unfamiliar door shields unknown things, possibly treasures, maybe horrors, maybe something interesting, probably just the mundane detritus of a life not much different than mine. But until the door is opened, it could be anything, and sometimes its fun to imagine what it might be. I felt this very strongly outside a residential gate in Lucerne, for instance; for some reason it seemed that those who lived there must be fascinating people doing fascinating things, and I wanted to meet them. Another time, I considered for a long time a worn door to an interior room in an old Spanish mission and imagined a selfless Jesuit on his knees or maybe a Native American child being punished for his waywardness. These are the entrances pictured here.

The mystery is enhanced by the interesting appearance of the doors I photograph. Many are rustic, some are ornate, but all are, to me anyway, aesthetically interesting. There is artistry here; some craftsman steeped in the lore of fine door-making wrought this. Surely a door so out of the ordinary must conceal extraordinary things! They suggest to me hippie communes, Tolkein-esque villages, Japanese tea gardens, Monte Cassino in an old war movie starring John Wayne back when he was still lean.

And then there's the functional nature of doors: They are, alternately, barriers or protection. They keep us safe from things like ax murderers and siding salesmen. They can also bar us from entry, an annoying trait I associate with the faculty door at the Rowenhorst Student Center where I work out; it's just across the street but often locked, necessitating a hike of a block or more to get to a public entrance.

An unlocked door, on the other hand, is permission. It is access granted, an invitation, inclusion. Where a locked door is a limitation, an unlocked door represents possibility, even opportunity. That's why I choose to believe that the doors I photograph are all unlocked, and why I never check - I suspect very few of them actually are. Probably they lock them when they see me coming.

If I did open one of these doors, what would I hope to find on the other side? What wondrous thing, what amazing experience, what wise person or beautiful sight or decadent treat would live up to the promise of the door? To speculate about such things is to think about who I am, why I believe I'm here, and what holes are still empty in my life. It's kind of scary, and potentially discouraging -- what if, after all that soul-searching, I discover that my fondest dream, the wonder I hope lies on the other side, is an all-meat pizza, a micro-brew, and the Twins beating the White Sox on a big-screen TV? 

It makes me think about my own doors, physical and spiritual. Too often, I fear, I have them tightly locked, a means of keeping my self to myself. I want my family and friends see my doors as invitations to something we will share, but do they? Do they see opportunity and the promise of memorable things, or are they too accustomed disappointment and a long trudge around to the public entrance?

Mental meanderings such as this are why it's amazing I'm still married -- this is the point where Dawn's eyes are usually glazed and she's struggling to find a polite response. Dad would say a door is just a door, you need one to keep the snow and neighbors from blowing in, that's all. I have rightfully been accused of thinking too much.

A vibrant thought life can be a handicap, especially in Northwest Iowa, where Dutchmen, farmers and Republicans tend to dominate -- pragmatic groups all, who don't normally put a high value on deep thinking. But I think if we take time to wonder, and wander, about the world, we find ourselves continually encountering the One who made it. That's a good enough reason for me.

Enough

I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of "enough." Actually, I've been thinking about this off and on for years, ever since we paid off the house and everyone immediately assumed we'd turn around and buy a bigger one. We looked - having friends in real estate is like having family members who sell financial instruments, they're always pitching something - but we found we didn't want any of those big houses. So now, years later, we're still blissfully unaware of how miserable we are in our little house.

The funny thing is, a lot of folks think it's because we don't have enough money. We just think this is enough house for two people. And we're left with this shameful problem of money in the bank, and a lot of well-intentioned advisors telling us that we need some debt. Because paying taxes is bad but paying Citibank is good? At least I get something for my taxes.

The same thing happens with cars (I guess a half-ton pickup should embarass me enough that I'll eagerly take on another three years of payments just to avoid the death blow to my image) and vacations. And a huge industry has sprung up just to address the sensitivity men have about the size of their TV sets.

And how about food? If an eight-ounce steak is good, a 10-ounce steak is better, and best of all is that two-pound monster you get for free if you can finish it all. The best restaurants are buffets, right? European friends say only in America is the quality of a meal judged by it's quantity. No such thing as eating enough; all our best celebrations involve food comas.

The truth is, I guess, that for most of us enough isn't. We need more . . . than we have now, than the other guy has, whatever. After all, isn't that what Nelson Rockefeller is supposed to have said when asked how much money is enough - just a little bit more?

It's an important question, because until we have enough, everything we get goes to feeding our own insatiable need. There's more than enough wealth in this country to end poverty, stamp out hunger, fix education, put people back to work. There are so many digits to the left of the decimal point of our collective worth that we can't really comprehend it, yet each individual one of us still thinks we don't have enough. So all that money goes up in interest-payment smoke, or gets locked into the IRA.

At least, though, we're all a lot happier. Oh, you're not?

Then let me suggest that you think a little bit about enough. Because there's a lot of happiness, in a weird sort of way, in giving away 15% of what you earn and then finding out you managed to save even more than that. In backing your bought-for-cash truck out of your paid-for garage and realizing you haven't paid a dime of interest to anyone in over a decade. In helping three families get into homes because your credit is not only golden, it's completely unencumbered.

There is such a thing as enough. And figuring out what it is is half the fun.

Confusion

I like to think that I have one of those cooler heads they always talk about (maybe it’s just because not much work gets done in there) but I’m beginning to be concerned at the direction this country is taking.
It started with the wussification of coffee. No longer is it the great American beverage that fueled cattle drives and kept soldiers alert through the dark hours of their watch. Thanks to Starbucks, Caribou and all their frilly little friends, coffee has been yuppified beyond recognition. For one thing, you can’t even get a regular cup, you have to start with tall and go from there to sizes that don’t even exist in English. And then you can’t fill the cup with actual coffee without the barista (huh, she’s barely 18 and can’t make change but she’s a barista?) letting you know through the same facial expression she uses when she hears the word “curfew” that you are hopelessly not cool and old. You’re supposed to order a frappucino or some sort of candy beverage with five words in the name. I mean, a venti white chocolate mocha cappuccino has more sugar, more syllables and almost as much solid matter as two pieces of tiramisu, with less coffee flavor. So if you learned to love coffee by waking up at zero-dark-thirty only two hours after you came in off patrol, and you want it black and hot even if it is July, there aren’t a lot of places where you’re welcome anymore.
The next thing I noticed was that our young people can no longer discern the differences in our political parties. Just look: the voice of the Young Republicans is a woman who loves burlesque shows, tweets her bra size, and supports tolerance for gay marriage, while the kid credited for the Internet –based social networking that got Obama elected is a graduate of Harvard Business School with solid venture capital creds. C’mon, you two, how’d you wander into the wrong party? Can’t you tell the difference between an elephant and a donkey? Well, it is getting harder. With the substitution of a few key words like “renewable energy” for “oil company,” the rhetoric is a lot the same. The Democrats have their own war now, and bought a chunk of General Motors. The Republicans are screaming about the deficit and proposing taxes. They have become each other. In fact, we really have a one-party system with two distinct camps, just like most church denominations.
And now we’re playing baseball in the winter. Games are postponed because of snow, and the talking heads are buzzing about what will happen if the Angels or Dodgers have to play in 40-degree weather. And the Twins have abandoned the Dome for a new outdoor park.
Now that I’ve spelled it out, can you see it? Our most sacred institutions – coffee, politics and baseball – have fallen victim to the creeping liberalization of our age. It’s time to swallow our pride and admit what we have denied for too long: Al Gore is right. It’s all due to global warming.
In retrospect, the progression is obvious. Once women started demanding we wear deodorant, our over-use of spray cans caused a hole in the ozone layer which allowed solar radiation to begin warming our climate. No, I don’t know why, since the hole is over the South Pole, Antarctica didn’t melt first but just shut up. So then, it got maybe two degrees warmer in the last 20 years except for the places where it got colder, like Gore’s hometown, and more parts of the world turned to desert except where we now have green grass seven months of the year instead of brown crunchy lawns in August. All this global warming led to the collapse of the “stuff we like when it’s cold” industry, like hot chocolate (except at Starbucks where you can get more kinds of chocolate than actual coffee) and studded snow tires. All those hot-chocolate factory workers who were suddenly un-employed could no longer make the payments on the million-dollar homes in Florida they bought as investments, so the government gave a bunch of money to some banks, bought into the car business and is going to get the money back by paying for health care for everyone. If you follow the obvious trends, this all can only lead to . . . hrmm, Al Sharpton freaking out about Rush Limbaugh owning an NFL team? No, that’s too weird, even for America.
Fortunately, there is someone in charge of this funny farm, and Psalm 2 says He’s just watching us and laughing. He’s going to make something good out of this mess, and I for one think it’s going to be kind of fun to watch.

With

I don’t hate running alone, but I don’t love it either.
I used to prefer it alone, back in the days when it was all about time and getting better and companions tended to screw up my race with the clock. These days, I pretty much settle in at the same relaxed pace no matter how far I go, so I like it a lot better if there’s someone along to chat with. (OK, now you know how much my pace has lagged over the years.)
In social terms, there’s something really powerful about the word “with.” Maybe a few grumpy curmudgeons prefer isolation (I’m not thinking about Dad here, really I’m not) but think of all the things in life that are better with.
- Movies. I’ve watched a lot of movies alone, which does not make me as desperate as it sounds. I’ve just spent way too many nights in motel rooms and Bachelor Officer Quarters, and between cable TV and laptops with DVD players movies are a natural default for time-killing, and a better one than the lobby bar. The advantage, of course, is I can always watch what I want. But there’s no one to laugh with, marvel with, criticize with. Yell at the screen with a buddy and you’re bonding; same thing alone just is kind of sad.
- Chores. Who doesn’t like a helping hand when there’s work to be done? Even if the other person is weeding while you clean gutters, or maybe standing there talking to you while you clean gutters, that’s better than cleaning gutters alone. It’s way better than cleaning gutters knowing the other person is in the house eating ice cream.
- Sightseeing. I toured Valley Forge alone one Sunday afternoon because the alternative was more motel time. All those families and couples having picnics or roller-blading or tossing Frisbees, and me wandering around by myself reading signs. Other times it was Chickamauga National Battlefield, Independence Hall, the shopping district in Osan, South Korea, a country hamlet in Wales. Cool places, but no joy in any of it because I had no one to share it with.
- Adversity. Don’t think I really need to explain this one, nobody likes facing bad stuff solo.
Of course the ultimate question of “with” is that significant relationship. Teenagers, spinsters and widowers all know that not being “with” someone in the sense of some sort of deeper life commitment is not only lonely, it puts you in a whole different social category. Our paradigm is built around pairs; singles have a tough time finding their place.
It’s a sad fact that we tend to make negative judgments about people who are alone. On the flip side, we have a certain admiration for the person who can be with anyone they want, and who is with a different person every Friday night.
That’s pretty screwed up, though. Date 50 different people and in the end you’ve had 50 first dates. Date one person 50 times and you have the unique and (usually) joyful experience of an acquaintance who turns into a friend, of a friendship that becomes something more.
I have a little secret for all you young people out there: You can only learn about love by dedicated application of the art with a single person over a long period of time.
[Flashback: Teenage son in despair over not being able to see a girl he just met, yelling at father who recently celebrated his 20th wedding anniversary – “You don’t know anything about love!” Was I the son or the father? Likely happened both ways.]
The sorry truth is, if you take the swinging single approach to your social life, your relationship experience will wind up being a mile wide and an inch deep, which means you’ve seen one inch of topsoil. A dedicated relationship gives you experience an inch wide and a mile deep, and then you’ll go through soil to bedrock, all the strata beneath, maybe an aquifer, probably see a few fossils, find some gemstones, and possibly strike oil.
This is true in the emotional sense; it’s also true for physical intimacy, as any couple married 50 years will tell you. My grandparents lived out that “till-death-do-us-part” vow, decades of experience and experiments with just the two of them, so you know they knew more about sex, and way more about love, than Casanova ever did. Hard to get more “with” than that.

Happiness

iPhone offers an app to track your happiness? Seriously? That is wrong in so many ways.

First off, one good way to destroy happiness is to try to measure it. “Hmm, I’m five percent less happy than yesterday. Wonder what went wrong? Ah, I’ll bet it’s because . . . Yep, that really makes me mad. Wait, down another ten points!” C’mon, who really thinks that’s going to work?

And even if that didn’t get you down, how about the simple act of having to log the data? That’s why fantasy sports geeks are the most miserable fans on the planet – they took a fun pastime and turned it into record-keeping, stat-tracking drudgery. So to make sure we’re happier let’s add a requirement for periodic data capture to our day? Doesn’t look like a glide path to success to me.

The problem here is everyone wants to be happy but we’re so screwed up we don’t even know what it really is, much less how to get there. We equate happiness with comfort and pleasure. Ain’t gonna work, because pleasure ends when the stimulus stops, which means for every moment of pleasure-induced happiness there is a corresponding moment of sadness when the pleasure is over. And guess which comes last?

And too much comfort gets uncomfortable. Don’t believe me? Go kick back in your recliner and put your feet up. Comfortable? Good, now stay there for eight hours and tell me how you feel.

I’m no genius but I’m as good as anyone at being unhappy, so I have a lot of experience treating the condition. There’s only one thing that really works.

First, a caveat: this side of heaven you won’t be happy all the time. Some things, like a bad CAT scan, should make you unhappy. If they don’t, that’s not happiness, that’s good meds.

So what we’re talking about here is why so often we’re unhappy with no particular reason, and I know what causes that.

That happens when you know, deep in your heart of hearts, that you aren’t worth the air you’re breathing. The equation is pretty simple – every day I’m alive I consume x amount of resources, whether that’s the water I use in the shower or the time it takes my wife to fix me a meal. We’re all sharing this planet, and I’m using stuff up, so it’s only right that I give something back. When I don’t, I can’t feel good about myself – I’m just another blood-sucking parasite. A lot of job-related unhappiness comes from knowing that some days we don’t earn our pay.

Flip it around, give value commensurate to what you cost, and you can be happy, because you can feel good about it. People like you, and you like yourself, when you’re a contributor. That’s why unearned leisure isn’t any fun. It’s also why a cold beer tastes best after a hard day’s work.

All of that is true no matter what your world view is. If you’re one who chooses to recognize the truth, then you know that these things are true because God wired us to be like Him, which is to say our purpose is all wrapped up with doing good and serving other people. Bottom line – the only way really to be happy is to be doing what we were made to do. The iPhone needs an app for that.

Plaid shorts

I envy guys who can wear plaid shorts.
So far, I haven’t been able to make myself do it. It’s just not me. Sigh . . .
When I see a guy wearing plaid shorts in public, with no hint of self-consciousness, I have to admit that, barring any unfortunate clash of colors/patterns or the presence of long dark socks, it looks pretty good. In fact, that’s a look that says, “I’m with it, I’m confident in who I am, and I like to have fun more than I like to be cool even though I‘m still way cooler than you.”
I like that. I want to be like that. I don’t really want to wear plaid shorts, because I don’t like them, but I want to look like that.
My problem is, I already have a well-established look. It consists of khakis on workdays, cargo shorts or jeans on the weekends, all of which I wear like I wish I was still wearing a uniform. The most charitable thing you can say about this look is, old school. In truth, it screams, “Retired army officer whose idea of fun probably involves discomfort for others, who would rather shoot someone than dance in public.”
And there-in lies the difference: Stupid is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The very fact of being worried about looking stupid makes you look stupid. If you could care less how you look, you just look fun. And I invariably look stupid when I do anything but walk. I can’t just act as the spirit moves, go with the flow, move with the groove. I have to calculate, consider effects, mull over possible outcomes. And when you do that, that fleeing moment where you can look smooth and natural passes while you’re still stuck on, “Hey, maybe if I . . .”
Somehow, plaid shorts have come to epitomize in my mind this basic inability I have to be naturally fun. For one thing, my knee jerk reaction when I see them on a manikin is, “Never in a hundred thousand years.” Give me earth tones or denim. But then, if I ever work up the courage to point out a pair to Dawn, she wrinkles up her nose and says, “Never in a hundred thousand years.”
It’s not that she hates plaid. She just instantly processes all the factors and reaches the fashion-attuned and socially-aware conclusion that anyone who knows me, upon seeing me in plaid shorts, would immediately assume I was having a mid-life crisis with possible alternative-lifestyle overtones. Which would be not so good.
So I’m stuck wondering if there’s a way to project that fun attitude while wearing khakis. And I realize that, yeah, the guy in the plaid shorts could, but I can’t. Because it’s not the shorts’ fault that I look like the third-least fun guy on the planet, after G. Gordon Liddy and Dick Cheney.
To fix that, I’d have to go back to the first day of kindergarten, when I was scared and shy and lay under a table sucking my thumb because Jack and the Bean Stalk was too intense. That start to my social career pretty much defenestrated any chance of being cool or fun.
I guess I’ll just have to live with the fact that even though strangers will think I’m gruff and unbending, those who know me understand that I’m really just a grouch who on his best day on earth didn’t have as much fun as that guy in the plaid shorts has just walking to the coffee shop. Not that I’m bitter.
So, new resolution: I’m going to be fun if I die in the attempt. I will try so hard I might sprain something. I will work at it until people who see me think “fun” even if I have to choke it out of them.
Or, maybe, I could just relax, be who God made me to be, and have fun watching the cool people have fun, and maybe join in a little if invited. Since all the people I love are cool, that should work out OK.
I think doing it that way may not make me fun, but it could give me joy, at least as I think God means the word. That would be the ultimate cool. Yeah, think I’ll try that.

Voices in my head

Sometimes I hear voices, insistent ones. They’re not evil, at least I don’t think they are, because they remind me of the gang I used to run with in middle school. We weren’t evil, although a number of female classmates probably thought so, but you could fairly say that the whole equaled something significantly less than the sum of the parts. That’s what the voices are like. Let me show you.

• Voice: “Eat it.” I really hate this guy. I can’t resist him because in 47 years of gastronomic experimentation I have only met two foods I didn’t like, and I’m reconsidering those. I even liked MREs. At home where the options on the table are limited, as are the quantities, this is less of a problem, but at the Chinese buffet? I know I’ll hate myself later.
• Voice: “There’s a girl! Speed up.” This is really stupid, because it’s just a twitch left over from high school – they don’t notice me and I don’t care. The element of surprise and my knee-jerk reaction make me completely susceptible, though, which means when college is in session that halfway through my run my wheezing steams up passing car windows and I have to hold my head sideways to keep from stepping on my tongue. Dawn laughs.
• Voice: “Tiger could do it.” I hear this guy only when I’m in the rough trying to stick the green between a near bunker and a far water hazard, which I can barely see through a small gap in the trees. Which means about once a hole. Immediately after my ball ricochets between several trees and comes to rest 15 feet behind me, I hear the voice saying “Hahahahahahaha!!!!”
• Voice: “Just for a second.” After lunch, warm quiet office, full belly, spreadsheet on the monitor, eyes drooping. Not good, not good at all. This dude is trying to get me fired. Fortunately I have my boss convinced that’s what I do when I’m thinking.
• Voice: “Just look. You don’t have to buy anything.” This one must live next to Best Buy, because I never hear him anywhere else. If I thought for just a minute I’d catch the lie; in that store, you do too have to buy something.
• Voice: “Dawn won’t catch on.” What, she can’t tell I goofed off while she was gone by the laundry wrinkling in the dryer and the dishes in the sink? This guy thinks I’m stupid. He’s right.
• Voice: “Just pick it up, you wimp. It’s not that big.” The fact that I ever listen is proof of near-term memory loss, because after ten years of quarterly chiropractor visits you’d think I would know that my back isn’t what it used to be. Funny thing is, I tend to do this more often when Dawn is there to help than when she isn’t. In a less mature individual that might be ego, but in this case I just can’t figure it out.

These are all male voices, as you can probably tell by what they’re saying. All guys, and their voices are all very, very similar to mine. Hmmm . . .
There is one voice that’s different though, maybe the only true friend of the bunch. This one has never gotten me in trouble, not even once. This is the one that says things like, “Just because you’re mad doesn’t mean he’s stupid,” and “Be faithful today to the man you want to be tomorrow,” and “Schedule doesn’t matter as much as people.” And “God loves you anyway, so get up, dust off and try again.”
This voice is female; she goes by the Greek name Sophia, Wisdom in English, and you can read all about her in the first part of Proverbs. She doesn’t shout, but if you listen you can hear her just fine, and she uses simple words even a dummy like me can understand. She has never steered me wrong, not once in the decades I’ve known her, which would make you think I’d listen more often. Ah well, get up, dust off . . .

Reflections on a wet car seat

Walked into my office with a soggy butt, thinking long thoughts about contentment.

The clammy caboose came from leaving the pick-up window rolled down overnight in the rain. Don’t do that very often, so it came as a surprise – of course, my first impulse was to blame somebody else, but I couldn’t pull that off in any supportable way.

The thoughts on contentment sprang from my amazement that having a damp derriere did not immediately ruin my day, not even when the overly-aggressive office air conditioning hit it. Why, I wondered, am I in such a good mood when nothing good has happened to me yet? (I guess the question itself shows that behind the grumpy mask I sometimes wear there does indeed reside a grump.)

Next step in the chain of logic was to think that some people don’t need good things to happen to be happy. Most children, for example, are happy unless something happens to make them unhappy. A few lucky adults are also like that, but I don’t think I’m unusual because I’m wired the opposite way. I tend to cruise along in emotional Neutral until an external force shifts me into another gear. In fact, it’s probably true that what I often think of as happiness is simply the absence of any degree of sadness.

That said, my soaked seat could have shifted me into Grouchy, especially given the constructive commentary that came with it. Why didn’t it? A little introspection made me aware of a warm fuzzy feeling that I tentatively identified as contentment. Being the man I am, I immediately tried to banish it.

For one thing, as a highly trained (former) member of the greatest fighting force on earth, I have not normally held warm and fuzzy in high esteem. In a testosterone-driven community like the Army you may as well paint a bull’s-eye on your back.

And then there’s my knee-jerk avoidance of vulnerability. This is that stupid thing from the lizard part of my brain that thinks high expectations are the single best way to be disappointed. Better to anticipate badness, because then reality will probably look OK.

To cap it off, I was trained by Uncle Sam to plan for the thing that’s most likely to happen and also for the worst thing that could happen. “Most likely” doesn’t often mean “really good” and “worst” never does, so you can see what frame of mind that approach can leave me in.

But today, despite my best efforts, I feel undeniably content. Don’t want anything, what I already have is good. Small house? Easier to clean, and big enough for two. Small TV? Don’t watch it much anyway. Small pick-up? More garage space. Small paycheck? It’s enough, and it’s really not that small either. Today I like my job, like this town, like the people in it, like the world. I even like myself. What gives? Wait, just thought of something. Be right back.

Nope, that little two-minute first-response drug test says I’m clean. No extra seeds on the poppy-seed muffins. So . . .

Maybe it has to do with the realization, refreshed by recent events, that God wrote the end of my story before I started on the beginning. So I already know how this winds up: I win. Or more accurately, we win, all of us who are riding the omnipotent shoulders of the God who took on the Ultimate Badness a long time ago and won. In that context all the sturm und drang of this world is just . . . stuff. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling today.

Either way, I’m just going to go with it. Sure, maybe one of the darker bits of life really is going to jump out and whack me upside the head. So what? Might fix the crick in my neck.