Category Archives: Illinois

Recreating the Past

Most people who live in Chicago’s Northwest Suburbs, where I spent part of my childhood, are excited by the prospect of the Chicago Bears moving into Arlington Park. For me, the move is bittersweet. Arlington Park is one of those places of personal significance. It is the first place I ever gambled. Gambling would become a significant component of my life’s experience, with more betting on horse racing, and then, when I turned 21, games like black jack and craps.

I still remember all of those summer afternoons watching horses race on that track. I remember sitting in the stands cheering on whatever horse I had bet $5 on as they came around the curve headed towards the finish line. I remember seeing the official results post on the scoreboard at the end of every race, indicating what I had won, or what money I would have won had I made a better bet. I even remember hearing the occasional train pass by and the energy of the crowd when there was a particularly exciting race, or when someone had to make a bigger bit on something like a trifecta and won.

My April 2022 trip to Chicago brought me back to three past periods of my life.

My parents still live in the suburban home I lived in from age 11 to 17, where I learned how to work for a living, pack my schedule with activities and, of course, gamble. Experiencing the Easter holiday with my niece and nephew, ages 5 and 7, reminded me of my earlier childhood, and what holidays mean to children. Finally, the trip included two trips into Chicago, where I spent my late 20s.

In any experience like this, it is tempting to expect the same experience we had in the past. It’s tempting to get nostalgic. It’s easy to envision watching the same Easter movies I had watched when I was a child, frequenting the places I loved in my teenage years, like the Arlington Park Racetrack, and frequenting the same bars and restaurants I loved when I worked downtown as a young adult.

However, like the racetrack, which will soon appear quite differently and likely be packed with football fans, the experiences are not likely to be the same. The kids have new things the love to watch, different activities and different preferences (I’m a Cubs fan).

Establishments close and new ones open up.

Punch Bowl Social actually opened its first location in Denver in 2014

And the overall situation we find ourselves in will inevitably change.

This is the only place I saw gas over $5

However, specifics like places, activities, prices and colors do not need to change for the experience to be different. Life’s experiences and the way we progress as human beings are inherently going to change our perspectives. Even if everything I did on this trip was exactly what I had remembered, a decade, or two, or three worth of life experience would have caused me to see them differently. I noticed this for the entire duration of the trip.

One of the most beautiful things about the experiences we have early in life, as children, is the fact that we often have no prior experience to compare them with. This is why children tend to watch movies, listen to music and take part in activities with an open mind. In adulthood, especially as we get older, it is tempting to compare any new experience with one from the past. We compare today’s music to the music of our adolescence. We compare the movies our kids watch with the kids movies of our childhood. And, we compare trends in things like fashion and lifestyles with the trends that defined our formative years.

However, to give ourselves the full opportunity to really enjoy the experiences we have in adulthood, we should temper the urge to make these comparisons. The experiences we have today do not owe it to us to live up to something that happened in the past. They are going to be what they are and only when we minimize the attachment to having the same experience we had years ago can we full be in the moment and enjoy what is in front of us for what it is.

Places Extroverts Love

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It’s been hard to know what to expect the last two years. First, places that are typically lively, full of people, full of life, suddenly became empty as the pandemic shut down businesses and places of gathering.

Then, for nearly two years, our experiences became variable and inconsistent.

It felt like the whole world was suddenly subject to mood swings that are impossible to explain or predict. Maybe we are still in this period of uncertainty, but I was pleasantly surprised by the energy levels on my last two trips.

The last weekend in March, Moab was quite lively.

The town was busy! There were a lot of people out and about, walking around and having experiences. Traffic actually made it quite a challenge to make a left hand turn. People all seemed lively. The energy was just great!

The same can be said of Chicago a couple of weeks later.

The energy, the spirit of the big city could once again be felt both on a Thursday evening with horrible weather and a Saturday night with better weather. There were a lot of people, out in groups, in the bars, as well as along the street where there is typically a lot of nightlife. It felt good just to know these places are back!

These places could hardly be any any different. Chicago is a city of 2.75 million with many skyscrapers and what can seem like endless unique neighborhoods to explore.

People who visit come for a truly urban experience, doing things like going to museums, summer festivals, professional sports or visiting friends and family.

Moab, by contrast, is a town with barely over 5,000 residents adjacent to two National Parks.

Most of the people one would encounter here are tourists who came to explore the outdoors. Moab is known for Jeeping, mountain biking and hiking among other activities.

These settings, while different, warmed my heart in a similar way. There is something about seeing people out and about, interacting with each other, interacting with the world, and doing so in a way that feels joyous. It is the combination of joy and crowds that extroverts have missed so much over the past couple of years.

These recent experiences have demonstrated that there are often multiple ways to obtain the same underlying feeling, and maybe it is a good idea not to get too attached to one specific experience. There are often circumstances that require versatility. Sometimes the weather is not what we were hoping for.

Other times it’s our schedules, our health, someone else’s needs or just plain bad luck.

When this happens it is helpful to know that sometimes a different experience, but one that is feasible given whatever our circumstance is can be a really good substitute, providing almost the exact same underlying feeling we are looking for. So far this spring, I have been in lively joyous crowds both in a tourist destination surrounded by people on vacation and in a large city surrounded mostly by people who live there. Next time we find ourselves disappointed by not getting the exact thing we want, maybe we should try to think about the underlying reason we wanted it and try to find another path.

My Thoughts on Turnpikes

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The Indiana Toll Road and Ohio Turnpike are not the most exciting of journeys. Much of the area looks exactly the same. The terrain is quite flat. There is corn and soy everywhere. The road connects a series of medium sized cities, coming close enough to efficiently connect them without actually passing through them. It is a form of transportation that maximizes one thing and one thing only: temporal efficiency.

In the Midwest, all roads start and end in Chicago. It took me a while to realize that, while Chicago is right in the middle of the region known as the Midwest, and is its unofficial capital, Chicago is really nothing like the rest of the Midwest. It is a big international city. It moves at a pace that is closer to that of other large cities than the rest of the Midwest.

Once someone leaves the greater Chicago area, they are likely to encounter a completely different mentality and a completely different way of life.

Chicago also kind of divides the Midwest. There are some subtle differences between what lies to the West of Chicago and what lies to the East. These subtle difference are probably only commonly thought of by those of us who have lived in the Midwest and those of us who have driven across the entire region and had time to observe it.

While there are farms everywhere in the region, the Western part of the region, West of Chicago seems to be built more around farmland. They have leveled enough trees to increase surface wind speeds (dense forests tend to reduce surface wind speeds) enough to make it a good place to build wind farms. The economies of many of the medium sized cities in this region are centered around farming equipment,

East of Chicago, trees are more plentiful. Medium sized cities here are a bit more frequent and they have more of a “rust belt” feel.

Cities here tend to have nicknames around what product are manufactured here…

Gary the Steel City
South Bend the Wagon City
Elkhart the RV Capitol of the World
Toledo the Glass City
Akron the Rubber City

As is the case with the subtle but noticeable difference between the region to the West and the region to the East of Chicago, there is also a subtle but noticeable difference between driving on turnpikes and driving on other highways.

Turnpikes tend to have elaborate exit ramps to facilitate toll collection. As a result, exits are often quite far apart.

Two things happen. First, rather than pulling off at an exit to stop for gas, restrooms and food, it ends up being more common to stop at rest areas.

As homogenized as standard highway driving is compared with traveling on roads that go through the center of town, turnpike driving is even more homogenous. All of the rest areas on the Ohio Turnpike look exactly the same and many of them have the exact same food options.

Also, with the exits fewer and father between, it becomes far less likely that drivers will follow the most direct path from their origin to their destination. Getting to a location is more about finding the nearest exit than the series of roads that provide the most direct path.

Turnpike driving maximizes temporal efficiency, but it is not my favorite method of transportation.

When traveling from place to place, sometimes there are things more important than getting to a destination as quick as possible. There are places to experience along the way. The experience of traveling along the Indiana Toll Road and Ohio Turnpike is a reminder of what we lose out on when we focus on one metric and one metric only, in this case temporal efficiency. While South Bend, Elkhart, Toledo and Sandusky will not top anyone’s list of top vacation destinations, whizzing by them from 10-20 miles away on a homogenous turnpike still feels like missing out on something that has the potential to be a worthwhile experience.

My First Two Flights After COVID

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Okay, this blog should have been titled “My First Two Flights After Vaccination.” There’s this new variant of the virus that is causing an increase in sickness and death in some places. However, given my situation and the statistics presented to me about the effectiveness of the vaccine I received, I returned to living a mostly “normal” life this summer, which included hoping on an airplane for the first time in over a year (although I did still have to wear a mask).

It is often said that people’s actions are a better indicator of what they truly value than their words. When I returned to traveling, my first trips were not to explore some far away unknown place, even though I still really want to do that. Instead, I chose to travel to places that are familiar and not as exciting, for the purpose of visiting friends and family.

My first trip was to Minnesota, to visit with friends from college. This photo is going to appear strange, but my friends decided to produce “flat” cardboard versions of every member of our group so that if we ever have a gathering some people can’t make, we can still kind of bring them with us.

There’s a “flat” version of me too….

This was not a glamorous destination. The main places we explored were Rochester, a town primarily known for the Mayo Clinic, which is certainly not a good place to visit right now, as well as a giant corn water tower.

Some 30 miles Southeast of Rochester, in the Root River Valley, I was surprised to discover that the town of Fountain, MN is the Sink Hole Capital of the U.S.A.

Seriously, it’s not in Florida as we all would have assumed.

But, they celebrate this odd distinction. The main attraction in town is a brewery named for the geological feature that caused the sinkhole here, where they bring in bands and food trucks to celebrate Sinkhole Saturdays.

My other trip was to the house where I would spend the second half of my childhood, ages 11-17, where my parents sill live.

It was for a family reunion where we barely even left the house. Most of what we did was playing games with the children, watch the olympics and do things like arts and crafts.

Both of these trips were a chance to laugh. They were a time to be funny, goofy, creative and social. They were times to interact with the world, the real world, what is physically in front of us rather than something on a screen.

They also both reminded me of past chapters of life. Visiting with college friends, I felt like the version of me I was when I was in college. Interacting with children reminded me of who I was when I was a child. I could not help but engage with that childlike spirit for life.

When I returned to a then smoky Colorado sky I could not help but ponder, and wonder.

Why is it that???

At the age of 10, when we interact with each other, our default mode is to play a game, think of something creative, imagine, run around and engage our imagination.
At the age of 20, when we interact with each other, we party, we still play games, just a different kind, we goof off, watch things and talk about things like who we find attractive and what event we want to go to next.
Sometime after the age of 30, we start to default to conversations about what is angering and dividing us, our latest source of frustration or something mundane.

What happens? Is there something about adulthood, or “adulting” that we are doing all wrong? Can we rethink all of this? Sometimes I feel like we need to.

I’m just fortunate that this summer has provided me with plenty of opportunities to once again engage with the world in a manner that feels far more human than most of what I was doing when we were all far more fearful of the pandemic (as well as a lot of what adult life had become in the 2010s).

It won’t be long before I am off to another foreign land I’ve never been to before. Exploring is something I value quite a bit. However, in the summer of 2021, given the phase of my life I am in as well as where we are culturally, I probably needed to laugh with my friends and family more than I needed to explore. Hidden in everyone’s actions, there is always a reason.

Exactly What Was Expected

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Sometimes in life, for better or for worse, things go exactly as expected.

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An average November produces only six clear days in Chicago, compared to 18 cloudy ones. December is even cloudier, averaging 20 cloudy days.

The weather I experienced, visiting Chicago over Thanksgiving and into early December was exactly what one should expect. With the exception of a few hours on one day, it was cloudy. There were stretches where it even got foggy.

A couple of days, it rained. Temperatures where in the 30s (-1 to +4°C) pretty much the entire time.

It could have been worse. Chicago is prone to cold air outbreaks, and while late November into early December is not the heart of winter, it is still possible for temperatures to drop down close to 0°F (-17°C).

Thanksgiving is not about pleasant weather, being outdoors or any specific activities. It’s not even really about the food or drink. It’s about gratitude. It’s also about spending time with friends and family.

The Thanksgiving feeling is that conversation, usually around the table, where everyone feels safe, supported and not judged. Everywhere we go in life, we feel the need to prove something. We are always trying to prove to our bosses that we are worthy of pay raises and promotions. We are often trying to prove to those in our social scenes that we are worth inviting to parties and events. With social media and smartphones, much of our lives have become trying to prove to people that we are interesting enough to warrant their attention. Thanksgiving, when done right, is a reprieve from all that!

Holidays are not without their struggle. Flights to visit family are often expensive and we are often forced to make tough decisions regarding visiting family at Thanksgiving, Christmas or for some other holiday. This year’s trip turned out really well, as my time in Chicago started on Thanksgiving, November 28th and extended about a week. I got to experience both holidays, as we had Thanksgiving dinner, but also were able to set up the Christmas tree, start singing Christmas songs and watching Christmas movies.

For many other reasons, the entire trip to Chicago ended up pretty closely aligned with expectations.

When trips to visit friends and family fall in line with expectations, it is almost always a good thing. However, in other areas of life, sometimes what we expect is not what we actually want. This is technically true of work right now. Well more than half of U.S. workers are not happy with how their jobs turn out. As of the end of the 2010s, going into any job, one would have to unfortunately bet on a poor experience.

In every area of life, from personal relationships, social endeavors, politics, to just going to the supermarket, an experience can be typical or it could be abnormal. How anyone feels after a “typical experience” depends on three factors.

1. Personality

Specifically, this often relates to how open we are and how optimistic we are. Optimists tend to have high expectations. This is generally a good thing, but can be frustrating when some anticipated better than normal experience does not come to pass. People who are more resistant to change would likely be more satisfied having an experience that falls in line with what is typically expected.

2. How one feels about the current state

This one is easy to reconcile. If someone likes where they are in life, and feels things are moving in the right direction, then they will be happy with a typical life experience. However, when someone feels like something in their lives or what they are observing around them needs a change in direction, a “typical” experience can actually lead to some level of depression.

3. Recent events in our own lives

Both ancient and recent philosophical writings have described the need for some kind of balance between the predictable and the chaotic. Too much of the former can lead to stagnation and that nagging feeling as if something is missing. Too much of the latter can lead to that feeling that everything is out of control and nothing can be counted on. Experiencing exactly what one expects falls into the category or order or the predictable. For someone whose life has felt out of control, an experience that follows the order of things can feel refreshing. For someone who feels antsy and stagnant after seven identical weeks following a constant routine, another typical experience could just add to the frustration.

A (Extended) Weekend That’s So Chicago

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A culture is often thought of as being attached to a Nation. This is “American Culture”, “Chinese Culture” or “Peruvian Culture”. However, most Nations on this planet have vast cultural differences within their borders. Nations as small as Belgium and Switzerland can point to different areas within their countries where people adhere to different customs and even speak different languages.

My extended weekend in Chicago started out with a classier evening that eventually lead to drinking wine until about 1:30 A.M. This was a Thursday. In some places within the United States, being out until 1:30 A.M. on a Thursday night is extremely abnormal. In the Midwest, people, especially younger people, stay out this late, or even later, on Thursday nights regularly.

The next morning I woke up to a reminder as to what makes this city a special place. With a high density of residencies and so many store fronts, it feels like there is excitement lurking around every corner. In most of Chicago’s neighborhoods, there is so much that can be done just a short walk away. It is something that is remembered fondly. However, this convenience has its flip side. The convenience of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood allowed me to accomplish so much during the day on Friday; making a bank deposit, picking up food and drink, buying clothing and eating at a new restaurant. All this was within a 20 minute walk of our “home” for the weekend.

However, that same convenience tends to silo people into their neighborhoods. If someone can have all of those things within a mile radius of where they live, it is naturally going to become more difficult to convince them to travel to a different neighborhood.

Friday evening I put on a tie, for the first time in 2019, to go to a formal wedding.

The attire was fancy. The venue was “elegant”. The bartender was making fantastic old fashioneds. The music was loud, fast paced, happy and energetic. The end of the night was a blur. It was exactly how Chicago does things.

The next day, Saturday, was a hodgepodge of activities, packed back to back one after another.

However, it did not start until after noon, as the wedding reception the previous night went on past 1 A.M. Mornings just seem to matter less here. The price of being slow to wake up in the morning, particularly on weekends, feels like it is much lower than it is in other places. The price of food and drink, however, is significantly higher. Fine wine and fancy cocktails cost money.

That evening would stretch just a little bit past Midnight, a bit earlier than would be expected of a stereotypical Chicago Saturday night. But, it was time for all of us to travel. Sunday morning, we would pack our bags, leave our wonderful Air BnB in Lincoln Park and go on to our next endeavors.

It’s been years since I left Chicago for Denver. This weekend was probably the closest thing to revisiting a previous chapter of life anyone could ever possibly experience. However, repeating the past is impossible. There are always going to be subtle differences.

The people around you one by one enter different life stages. Their circumstances, preferences, and even world views, little by little, change. The energy is different. Sometimes, the same exact actions, or conversation topics, lead to significantly different experiences.

It is for this reason I take a somewhat cautious approach to nastolgia.

Sure, it is fun to reminisce about experiences from past chapters of life, or even re-experience them they way I did in Chicago. However, they are never exactly the same. There is also the danger of spending so much time reminiscing about and idealizing the past, that we are no longer truly immersed in the present. To live our best lives, we must live in the now, and maintain that youthful spirit that keeps us open to new opportunities and different cultures, whether those different cultures be within the borders of our Nation, or in a land that is officially foreign.

Focusing on What Really Matters

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That is, the people that have made, and continue to make, my life what it is.

Our day-to-day lives can become, at times, spiritually toxic.

We get preoccupied by what we are doing on a day-to-day basis. Often that involves a combination of work, other responsibilities, and some form of “quest” we have for ourselves. For many, that “quest” is status or career related. However, for some, things that are typically thought of as “leisurely” can end up being that quest….

I need to get a better golf score.

I need to be the best looking person at the party…

I need to get a better time running up “the incline“…

How much skiing can I do in one day?

More often than not, we achieve what we set out to do, as long as we willing to put the necessary time and energy into it. If it truly matters to someone to be popular, they eventually will be popular. If it truly matters to someone to advance at work, make a lot of money, or even play on a winning softball team, well, it will be done.

I guess things do happen by accident too.

It’s just a simple matter that, well, nobody has the time and energy for everything.

We have to make choices. We have to set priorities. Over time, our lives end up becoming reflection of the priorities we set. When I see a divorced and single powerful executive, well, it is clear where their priorities have been for quite some time.

Sometimes I lose sight of this, but people have always been a priority to me. I feel far more fulfilled when I share my adventures with people, and I am certainly more satisfied when the tasks I perform on a regular basis are having a positive impact on the lives of other people.

Acting more in accordance with what my true priorities are, I spent a long weekend, right in the middle of the summer, in the flat midwest, largely indoors.

Not just in the maze of suburbs that surround Chicago, and in Indianapolis, Indiana, but also traveling I-65 between the two, not the most glamorous ride.

The main draw to Indianapolis is its affordability. It does not necessarily find itself at the top of people’s “bucket lists”, or desired travel destinations.

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However, many chose to live here. The city continues to grow and appears to be prospering!

Which means that, in Indianapolis, a group of people can easily find enough interesting things to do and have a really good night out. It is often cheaper too. Well, that is unless the evening includes a visit to the most expensive steakhouse in town…

One of Indiana’s most iconic restaurants aside, the weekend was not about being at a high profile destination. It was about the people I was around, and it was nothing short of magical. I felt that feeling that is so elusive we do not even have a word for it in the English language; the opposite of loneliness, in a world that is lonelier than ever! I am blessed to have the people in my life that I have, near and far, from all my life’s “chapters”, and people who are willing to set aside time and energy to meet up with each other. This is what made me feel so wonderful this weekend- possibly more wonderful than I would have felt had I went off on my own, to a bucket list destination, or spent this time trying to advance my career.

When we act according to our true priorities, the result is always better

Just as important as what our priorities are is how our priorities are set.

Not everyone will set their priorities exactly like I do. The question is whether we are being true to ourselves when these priorities are determined, day in and day out whenever there are multiple needs competing for our time, money, attention, and energy (i.e. life).

Are we making choices based on our own understanding of what we need to feel happy and fulfilled? Or are we letting something else dictate what we prioritize? Fear of losing a job? The desire for approval from others? Someone else?

The world can often bring us in the wrong direction, setting the wrong priorities. The boss pressuring you to perform. Peers bringing out your competitive side. Even self-doubt. This is why I urge everyone, in order to achieve a better life result, to..

Determine priorities for yourself. List them, and order them.
Each week set aside time to evaluate, and most importantly, reassert in your own life what your priorities are and how that should be reflected in your choices.
Occasionally re-evaluate those priorities, and determine if some areas are needing more attention.

Logan Square: A Place That Still Feels Like Home

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In some ways, it feels as if I never left. I go about my business from instinct. I do not need to look up where things are, think too hard about how to get there, and fret about to expect from the people around me. It is all still very familiar, fresh in my memory. Things like how the streets are laid out, where the traffic lights are, or where and how to board busses and trains are still like second nature to me. It is what makes a place feel like “home”. It is what many people miss after a couple of months moving to a new town, as, for most, it takes time to become truly acquainted with a city, the customs, the energy, mannerisms and the like.

It’s now been nearly four years since I moved away from this neighborhood of Chicago, situated several miles northwest of downtown, near the halfway point between downtown and O’Hare International Airport. Four years has always been a fascinating length of time for me. I was a teenager when I first observed the significance of this length of time – four years. I’ve always been fascinated with observing people, what makes them the way they are and how that changes over time. I’d think about people, including myself, who they were, what kind of life they are living, what activities they are taking part in, and what their expectations are. These things were likely to be quite similar one year to the next, but after a four year time frame, significant differences would be observed in most people.

This may be cultural, as we are trained from a young age to break our lives down into four year increments (high school, college, etc.). But, I noticed something else too. It felt as if four years was how long certain unintentional transitions took to manifest. It’s how long a person can passively absorb a new culture (by passively I mean neither actively embracing nor resisting it) before starting to also reflect it. It is how long one can go without talking to someone before it really does start to become awkward to meet again.

It’s not like everything is exactly the way it was four years ago. No place really works like that. Over the course of time, things change: A store goes out of business, a new one pops up, a few places renovate their buildings, new signage comes in, etc. We are accustomed to this gradual change. In the place where we live, we do not even notice it. It’s kind of a seamless flow. However, after several years, the cumulative effect of all the new development becomes noticeable. This Logan Square, the one I returned to in June 2016 is not different enough to feel foreign to me. It feels more like when a best friend gets a different haircut, or when a house gets one room remodeled. It’s still the same person. It’s still the same house. It’s still the same Logan Square, just with a couple of new features.

Logan Square is also a neighborhood in transition. It has been for a long time. At the turn of the century, when the renewed interest in urban living following the crime reductions that took place in many major cities during the 1990s was still a new thing, Logan Square was still run down, and kind of edgy. It would take a few more years and several thousand more young people searching for the new urban life. However, Logan Square was destined to become a destination for young urban professionals. The CTA blue line runs right through the heart of the neighborhood, giving residents easy access to both downtown and O’Hare airport. Logan Square is somewhat of a hybrid neighborhood in this sense. It is possible to live here car free. But, car ownership is not the burden it is closer to downtown, where monthly parking can get quite pricey. Most residents pay something like $100 a year (I’m not sure what it is exactly now- not something I keep up with) for a neighborhood city sticker.

The Logan Square I came back to was a Logan Square with somewhat more energy than it had several years ago. There were more people walking around. There was more nightlife. There were more buildings, and a lot of new restaurants, bars, shops, just places to go in general. This should not be surprising. It is just a continuation of the trend that I had once been a part of. Logan Square felt more energetic and more alive, but it definitely maintained most of its individual character. It felt like home- just a slightly livelier home.

The weekend was fast-paced, and full of events, taking me from one side of the city to the other. Due to time constraints, I took far too many Uber rides, as it would have taken longer to take trains and busses everywhere. I recall going up and down the Kennedy and Dan Ryan expressways, passing from one side of town to another over and over again. This is the part of a busy weekend, which is mostly about scrambling around to as many events, and seeing as many people as possible, that fades into kind of a blur. It’s just a blur of nighttime expressway riding, going through Hubbard’s Canyon and riding by the new Whirlyball building a whole bunch of times.

Trips back to Chicago always feel like a whirlwind for me. Trying to spend time with family friends, etc., see as many people as possible. But, there is more to it than that. Everything around me seems to happen faster here. There is something about dense urban environments that make me, and probably others around me as well, walk faster, move faster, live faster. Events happen and plans come together much quicker. It’s like there is something in the air, or something about seeing a lot of buildings, people, and just stuff going on all around us that makes us want to pick up the pace. If there is one thing I truly miss about Chicago and my life there, it is that.

Going Back to My Roots

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“If you know your history, then you’ll know where you’re coming from”, Bob Marley explains in his classic hit song Buffalo Soldier. It’s hard to really know how many places the functional equivalent of this phrase has been uttered throughout the history of mankind.

What does it mean to “know your history”, or “know where you’ve been”? Is it sufficient to know your personal story? Or, do you need to know the story of your parents, and your family’s ancestors? How deeply must we understand the cause and effect relationships of events in the past? After all, history, whether we are talking about it in an academic sense or in a personal narrative is about more than just facts. When asked, nearly all people can recite the rudimentary factual aspects of their lives. Where they were born, what schools they attended, when they moved, married, changed jobs, etc. I always wonder, though, whether they understand their life’s events more deeply, how certain things impact one another, what emotions were involved, and what events were significant. In other words, do they understand the “story” of their lives?

This holiday season, and by holiday season I am referring to Christmas and New Years, was kind of a trip back through my own history, or at least the places where said history took place. First, Christmas was spent in the suburbs of Chicago, with my immediate family. I spent a little bit of time in the City of Chicago, with friends, which is where I spent the four years before moving to Denver. But, I largely spent that time in Buffalo Grove, a sort of typical suburb 35 miles northwest of downtown, and the place where I spent my Junior High and High School years.

It’s been said, particularly of Millennials, that young adults go home for the holidays and revert into their teenager mode, subconsciously, because they have returned to the setting of their teenage years. For me, it is a little bit more complicated. Some things are the same, but some things are different. Some things get a little bit more different every year. There is the obvious course of change any particular location undergoes over time; that restaurant that closed, with a new one opening in its place, the road that was reconstructed and widened on the other side of town, and the new neighbors. But there’s also a strange change in how we respond to things, sometimes things that are exactly the same as they were in previous years.

Over the course of our lives, we periodically re-examine things (I do this more than most). Maybe it’s a different experience, or being exposed to a different point of view on something, or some major event. Each year we come back with a slightly different perspective, and, that experience, which was the same exact one we had last year, the year before, and back when we were 14, is viewed differently in our own minds. When it comes specifically to what my family does, both during the holidays, as well as in life in general, there are mixed emotions. There are some things my family does that I did not really appreciate with I was younger, but have found a new appreciation for. There are other things now seem strange to me. I am guessing many people who have moved a significant distance away from “home” have a similar experience at the holidays.

The Chicago area is not my full history. The first 11.5 years of my life, I lived in New York, outside of New York City on Long Island. I didn’t specifically travel to New York on New Years Eve as part of some plan to revisit my past.

But, the two practically back-to-back trips did line up in a manner where I could not help but think along these lines. New Years is already a time when people reflect on their lives. Having just spent time in the place where I spent my recent past, and now being in a place where parts of my early childhood unfolded, I could not help but think it is time for me to re-connect with who I am.

The move from New York to Chicago, my college and graduate school experience, jobs and more recent move to Colorado are the rudimentary facts of my life. My “history”, is the memories, the periodic experiences, the kind of person I was and the kind of people I was around. It is something that is remembered, hopefully accurately, and something that can be reconnected with, but only partially. The New York of 2016 is not the New York of the 1990s. Neighborhoods have made transitions, different kinds of people have both left and moved in, and some of the things one will experience here are significantly different.

However, some of the things are the same. And, while I was not reliving a childhood event, coming back to the places where our formative years unfolded can help us reconnect with our roots. Through this experience, I feel like I am being called to return to my roots, the person I am, naturally, rather than the person we are all pressured to become as we adults in today’s world. It’s like 2016 begun with what the year’s theme needs to be. Outside of whatever negative feedback we have received, the adjustments we have made to be accepted, and who we were told to be, there is a person inside of all of us, the person we naturally are. In this midst of everything I do in my adult life, this is a person I need to not lose sight of. It is a person many of us need to reconnect with. It is my sincere hope that in 2016, we all reconnect with our roots both individually and collectively.

Visiting the Past and the Future- Part 2

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I came back to the Chicago area for a number of reasons. In fact, I had so many reasons to be here, it would have been hard to justify not being here. Simply put, it was where I needed to be at this particular time, despite the fact that I now live elsewhere.

The primary reason for my visit was to meet my family’s newest member; my nephew, who was born only a week before I arrived back in Chicago’s Northwest suburbs, where both my parents, and my sister/ brother-in-law live. At the age of 8 days, I got to meet him, and was able to subsequently spend some time with him over the course of the following week. However, as I sit back at my home in Denver, I cannot help but think of what I am missing out on being 1000 miles away from “home”. Specifically, I am thinking of this newborn baby, who will go through different phases of development, possibly on a daily to weekly basis for some time to come, as life changes at a faster pace for children than it does for adults. Even if I come back twice a year, there are phases in his development I am destined to miss. That is just the way it is.

However, my mind also drifts to all the rest of my family members, as well as my friends, back here in Chicago (as well as the surrounding area). While adults have lives that do not go through changes in as rapid of succession as children, and it is easier to “catch up”, we still do have experiences on a daily basis. And, as much as some people post much of their daily lives on social media, or do a decent job of keeping in touch, I do wonder what I am missing. I dwell on the fun daily events, strange occurrences and “inside jokes” that made all of the people around me so much fun to be around. But, I also dwell on the ups and downs, and the times when someone important to you just simply needs some encouragement, or, conversely, some advice.

I was wearing a suit the day I met my nephew, as I was on my way to the first of a number of events I would also attend over the course of the week. This one, a wedding for one of my good friends from college, in Northwest Indiana.

Here, not only did I get to witness the big day for the bride and groom, but as is common with events like this, I got the chance to hang out with several other friends from college. In a way it was just like it was back in the day. There are some people in all of our lives who we can not see for weeks, months, years, and still just pick right back up where we left off as if we had just seen each other the previous day. I am blessed to have a good number of people like this in my life.

However, there was an obvious difference between now and then, and that is children. Some of my friends also traveled a significant distance to be at this wedding, and they did so with children. It is actually pretty inspiring to me, as they had decided somewhat spontaneously to travel to Indiana for this wedding, and were still able to do so despite having a 5 year old and a (not quite) 5 month old respectively. And, they stayed at the wedding longer than many other people. It makes me think of a future chapter of life, that my involve children of my own, with a lot more hope, that maybe the “your life is over” camp are significantly exaggerating when they describe the impact starting a family has on one’s life. So, as was the case with so much of my trip, I was simultaneously living out a past “chapter” of my life, while also getting glimpses of a future “chapter”.

In fact, the rest of my week was also partially a baby/child meeting tour. I wanted to try to see as many people, and take part in as many events with my friends, as possible, while still spending a significant amount of time with my family and my new nephew. Luckily, many of my friends were able to work with me schedule-wise to create a successful trip! And, I got to take part in all kinds of activities ranging from simple lunches to crazy nights out in large groups. Over the course of the week, I was living the life I had lived as a child, as a young adult, and as I will live it in the future. In a way, I spent the week in one place, but in another way, I was in too many different places to count.

The Chicago metropolitan area is centered around downtown, where trains from all directions converge, as do countless people every day. It also includes countless suburbs, and even Northwest Indiana. It is a place where, much like my experiences over the course of the past week, people are doing everything from working hard and playing hard, to relaxing, to trying to do the best the can to raise a family.

And, when I see my newborn nephew, or any newborn child, I see the great equalizer.

Every single person, from the most successful to the biggest failures, from Bill Gates to habitual criminal, from the most personable to the biggest asshole, began as a vulnerable newborn infant, just like this. No matter who someone is, they started out in this position, as a baby, completely dependent on someone else to survive and reach adulthood. And, in the pool of newborn babies at the hospital at any given time, are people that will one day go on to become influential individuals both good and bad, people that will make their families proud, but also people who will one day disappoint, and people who will be nothing but kind and generous to their fellow human beings, but also people who will treat others with contempt and recklessness. But, for now, each child I met over the course of this week is just a child, a person trying to figure out the world around them in various stages. All we can do for them is give a good example. Over the course of the week, I found myself repeating one phrase to the children I had encountered; “A positive attitude is contagious”. When I smiled at a child, they would often smile back. It is basic human nature, and one of the most powerful tools we can take into our day-to-day lives to produce the best possible outcomes.

The Action Story

Learning about the world and about ourselves through travel and experiences

Category Archives: Illinois

Recreating the Past

My Thoughts on Turnpikes

Exactly What Was Expected

1. Personality

2. How one feels about the current state

3. Recent events in our own lives

Focusing on What Really Matters

I guess things do happen by accident too.

Logan Square: A Place That Still Feels Like Home

Going Back to My Roots

Visiting the Past and the Future- Part 2