Being Honest

Several years ago I had something of an epiphany (I just spelled "epiphany" correctly on my first try. This is a very big deal.). I realized that it's very hard, maybe impossible, to be honest with anyone else if you can't be honest with yourself. I know that it reads like something you might read in a fortune cookie, a sort of generic self-help feel-goodery that might draw an enthusiastic applause when uttered by a Dr. Phil. It's a Dr. Phil sound bite is what it is.

As cliche as it might sound, it was something that I took to heart, and to my benefit. I learned to be comfortable in my own skin and to greater appreciate some of the more subtile nuances in this adventure called life. I was learning, I was growing, and . . . then I stopped . . . ?

If I had to I could pin point the time, place, and even the hour when this happened, but the details are far less important than the simple fact that I turned my back on my own self-defining fortune cookie.

When I was in Spain I knew a married couple that was in their mid to late 60's. They were both brilliant and successful people, two of the smartest people I've ever met, hands down. Yet despite their best efforts, countless hours of tutoring and the best possible books and materials that money could buy, they could not learn Spanish. Simple phrases came slowly, meticulously, and riddled with errors, and the pronunciation was worse. They'd spent 60-something years speaking English, the sounds and tones they were used to were now carved in stone, inflexible and unforgiving.

When I look in the mirror a 27 year old me stares back. Chubbier cheeks than before, lines where there were none, and increasingly silver hair. But these are merely cosmetic worries, and frankly they don't concern me. I worry about how much longer I have before my habits and beliefs turn to unmovable stone. Am I already there? Is it too late to change? Some say so, but I'd like to think I have time.

I'm not saying, I'm just saying

I am tired of morons like this hijacking public discourse with their nonsensical ramblings that are so stupid a 5th grader could see through them. Glenn Beck is a dumber version of Stephen Colbert's character on the Colbert Report, and yet millions of people take him seriously! His constant comparisons of Obama to Hitler, or in this case Osama Bin Laden, are wrong and they are dangerous. This is the kind of rhetoric that gets the wrong people fired up and angry, namely uneducated gun owners. Is it too much to ask that our media present real issues and real debate about serious issues that affect us all?

Why do . . .

cats dig around in new litter? Do they think they're going to find a treasure?

4th Meal

You know we have a weight problem when Taco Bell's "4th Meal" advertising campaign, which is basically an attempt to insert a giant calorie-heavy meal into the middle of the night, seems like a good idea to a large part of the population.

Can Burned Bridges be Rebuilt?

No one is perfect, or so they say. The mistakes we make range small ones, like accidentally wearing a black sock with a dark blue sock, to the catastrophic (like wearing a brown belt with black pants*). Some mistakes are easily amended, or are simply inconsequential to begin with. Often times we are the only ones who suffer from our own bone-headedness.

But those mistakes are hardly something to lose sleep over. So maybe I accidentally clicked the wrong box and subscribed to Redbook instead of Men's Health, or wasted an entire hour (ok, four) watching Tyra reruns on a Saturday morning. Sure, Tyra may have been educational and uplifting, but I would be hard pressed to argue that it was a good usage of my time. I could have been reading Moby Dick, curing cancer, or at least watching Who's the Boss? reruns.

But what do you do when you've been a lousy friend? When metaphorical bridges have been burned, and not just burned but decimated in truly tragic fashion, what can you do? I don't know if it's even fair to speak in terms of bridges. There should be Grand Canyon like depths and fiery pits involved too. I'm not sure how they fit in the metaphor exactly but the imagery is striking so what the hell. I often find myself standing on the other side of the Grand Canyon-like fiery pit wondering how to get back to where I once stood. To build a bridge across such an obstacle would certainly warrant an episode of Modern Marvels on the History Channel.

Time machines have not been invented, so it would be impossible to go back to, say, 2003 to coach myself on bridge maintenance, if you will. Sometimes I feel like if I could only shout loud enough, maybe my words could travel through time. Have you ever looked at a photo of yourself from years earlier and just wanted to shout, "There's so much I need to tell you!"

I'm not so sure if burned bridges can be rebuilt, but I it never hurts to try. I think I'll start by extinguishing those fiery pits.

*More on matching later.

Desafios

Un desafio me enfrentaba.

No era uno sino varios, pero todos de la misma pinta.

Una, dos, tres oportunidades de ser el que quería y quiero ser.

Una, dos, tres oportunidades perdidas para siempre en el viento del pasado.

El mismo desafio me enfrenta vez tras vez en estos días, viejo amigo, llamándome lo que soy--cobarde.

Agobiado me siento bajo las oportunidades perdidas y fallas cometidas, y me pregunto sí es posible, ¿regresar?

The Beatles

I broke down and bought one of the new digitally remastered Beatles albums yesterday. At one point I had all their music, but CD's got scratched, cassettes were discarded, and my record player is in my parent's garage (a problem that must soon be remedied). I have a few of their albums on my computer, but I'm pretty far from having a complete collection.

I decided to get the White Album, the Beatles only double album, a welcome departure from Magical Mystery Tour, but not quite as good as subsequent albums, in my opinion.

I played the CD in the car on the way home. In a weird way it was like seeing an old friend for the first time in years. The first track I listened to was Birthday, a vamped up, cheesy ,and happy-go-lucky birthday song. The very next song is Yer Blues, which opens with John Lennon proclaiming, "Yes I'm lonely. Wanna die." The sort of natural high inspired by Birthday is wiped away in the first five seconds of Yer Blues. The contrast between these first two tracks was striking and immediately apparent. According to some it's the kind of contrast that helped make the Beatles great. Paul's "yeah-yeah-yeah's" and John's "wanna die's" represent the inevitable highs and lows, good times and bad that paint our lives.

It's funny what stands out when listening with 27 year old ears, as opposed to teenager ears. Sad songs seem sadder given a deeper contextual backdrop. Happy songs are richer and more alive than they ever were growing up. I realized that no song is written in a vacuum. Instead they are dressed in the pain, beauty, disappointment, and fears of the song writer. An early death of a parent, abandonment, ecstasy, the birth and death of a friendship. These things lie hiding behind the words and notes. The more the listener experiences in his or her own life the more these things begin to peek out into the open.