Journeys

The wife and I went to New Castle for a day this weekend. My dad was preaching at a small church, and at one point in the service people brought up concerns and prayer requests. Two people mentioned loved ones who had to be rushed to Pittsburgh for medical treatment. It's amazing for me to think of this city like that, as a faraway place where the sick and dying must go to be kept alive, but for so many people, a trip to Pittsburgh means a loved one is hurting.

I've been seeing a lot of people bringing up a lot of evidence that the United States is an empire in decline. Some think it is due to the fact that we got away from our Constitution or our old way of life. Some say it is because we are too gluttonous and greedy. Still others say that the reason doesn't matter--that empires eventually and inevitably decline.

People relate to life in two ways, I think. The first is how you see yourself as an individual person. This view incorporates those with whom you interact and their influence on you. The second is how you see yourself as a human being in the long-term sense of humanity. A good example is an old person you love. You want your great grandfather to live forever, but if he does, future children will miss out on all the resources he consumed in his long life.

For me, Pittsburgh, with all its potholes and crappy politicians, is home. For others, it is a last chance. The city has done well at adapting to progress, moving from a primarily steel based economy to one set in education and medicine. There's a certain dignity and clarity involved in seeing yourself as just a small cog in a much larger machine. Imagine what the state of the city would be if it had refused to abandon its coal-fired roots. Pittsburgh no longer shapes the world as it did in its heyday, yet it's doing pretty well. Perhaps we're better off forgetting about the way things used to be and just looking forward. We all share one thing in common: no matter what we do now we are all in the end just future history.

Coincidence feels like Luck

I'm going to start writing on here more because it is good practice.

On Wednesday I went to the grocery store because I wanted bread to go with the fish and green beans I was cooking. Also Wednesday is one of the two days each week that the Powerball is drawn. I usually buy one ticket per drawing because it seems like a worthy investment. So I get my bread after muscling out an Asian couple in the checkout line (I only had one item, they had like 50) and go to the lottery-ticket dispensing machine. I slide a crisp dollar into the slot and press the quick pick button. No ticket. After thinking it best to just walk away, I reluctantly pluck another dollar from my wallet and decide to pick numbers. My finger hovers between 29 and 30. Intuition says 29, mind says 30. I go with 30.

The first ticket drops with the second; oddly enough showing a Powerball of 29. As it turns out, that night the number drawn was 27. Oh well. I don't really play the Powerball to win, but to hang on the promise that miraculous life change is possible and for all we know, imminent.

Nostalgia. . .

Something about the smell of warm air in Pittsburgh always pulls me back to the spring of my freshman year of college. It smells like promise and potential.

Driving home from work today I get the same feeling I had early in 2005. So, I sit here with the window open wide to that magical air and the Shins' "Chutes Too Narrow" wailing from the speakers, and I reminisce about the wonderful world open to a young man with no responsibilities and nothing but optimism for tomorrow.

The world has changed since then. I have grown up--to some degree anyways. And after a period of weary cynicism and complacency, life is beginning to seem like it did that spring. Good things surely are to come. T.S. Eliot said in Little Gidding, "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

I'm ready to revisit the future.