“Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,

                   Laughing!”

– From Chicago, by Carl Sandburg

I just returned from Chicago after visiting my daughter. Every time I travel there memories flood in of my first real visit to the city, in 2001. I remember feeling young, and exuberant about life. A rising star in real estate, visions of grandeur included skyscrapers built under my banner, with the rich and powerful interrupting their day to answer my important phone call. I was faithfully confident. Life was free, and easy, and seemingly under my control.

During my 2017 visit I watched the millenials cavorting around the restaurants and taverns, upwardly mobile with their trendy clothes and fast cars. They look happy and excited for what life might bring. I used to feel that way. Do I still? It’s different now. Sometimes I wish I could go back. Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have to.

I didn’t know it then, but my plan in 2001 did not correspond to Life’s plan. How often have I felt broken and lost in the past 10 years? Too many times to count. But I haven’t given up and I am grateful. So what is it? Why is my heart so heavy today?

I regret the losses and missed opportunities. I regret losing my marriage and am not sure if it possible to recapture the intensity of love I felt for Suzanne. I want my daughter to be little again and to go back, knowing what I know now, and redo it ALL. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You can’t go back, knowing what you know now. I’m afraid that if I went back that I would repeat the same mistakes over again. It’s only through the experience of losing things that I can seem to really know how valuable they were to begin with.

But there is something that supplants the exuberance of youth and I can’t quite define it yet because I’m going through it. Of course wisdom is involved but there is something more: an appreciation for the beauty of life that isn’t in the obvious. Youth is beautiful in a tangible way. When you’re young, life is still new and wide open, bodies haven’t broken down and faces aren’t wrinkled. The intangible beauty of middle age has to do with the quality and substance of relationships, an ability to consider mortality and how we are part of something bigger.

We went to the field museum in Chicago and walked through the Evolving Planet exhibit. (The one with all the dinosaurs). Even today we are part of this story. What we experience today is the result of what others did in the past and the experience of future generations will be predicated on what we do today, and so on and so on.

I don’t want to leave this life having “tuned out” to what Life really means. I don’t have an answer and in some ways I hope I never will. It is the search for meaning that allows for fulfillment and richness of experience versus the conclusive context of meaning in itself.

“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.”

– Quote from the character of Ricky Fitts in American Beauty