12 Years

When someone you love passes on, the day they pass leaves a permanent mark on your soul.

Each year becomes a collection of new memories with a conspicuous hole in them; a place where someone was supposed to be.

The day carries an odd juxtaposition of somber and “carrying on,” which can be jarring—as a society, we tend to pause when a president or an athlete dies, but most of us regular folks don't receive that kind of recognition.

The world, and indeed life, keeps right on with its proverbial—if you'll pardon me for saying—bullshit.

It seems almost cruel to laugh, joke about nonsense, or plan for the future; that is, of course, exactly what she would want. Grief, if it’s any comfort, is at least a one-sided affair. (Granted, there are a lot of us on this side.)

Today is a day of grief for my family, not to mention pretty much everyone who knew her, but our lives, too, must carry forward.

No, twelve years is not enough to dull the ache. We miss you, Steph. You may be a hole in our lives, but your life gives that emptiness meaning. Over a decade later, that void still hurts because of how you affected us all.

Because of how you still affect us.

Love often hurts, but after all, it is the most powerful force in the Universe. It is no coincidence that some religions claim that God is love. Whether you believe that or not, you can’t deny that love can be healing and destructive; a fountain of both joy and pain. But man, let me tell you, is it ever important.

Never forget that.

Today, like every other day, we remember love.

Book Review: Midnight Library

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short story that attempted, in as few words as possible, to convey nothing less than The Meaning of Life. Whether or not my endeavor was successful I suppose depends on the reader, but at the very least, I knew what I was trying to say.

Fortunately, what I was trying to say is said most successfully (and with many more beautiful words) in Matt Haig’s book, The Midnight Library. It currently sits on a New York Times bestseller list, and for good reason.

Here’s the premise: in the transitional space between life and death is a library. The shelves are filled with infinite books; each one containing a different variation of your life. By flipping through the pages, you can jump in and out of endless possibilities of yourself, exploring different quantum universes. In one life, you might be a rockstar; in another, happily married with kids.

Of course, there are bad lives, too, and all variations in between. Infinite possibilities, all spread throughout the multiverse's largest library.

Nora Seed, our protagonist, is in a bad place at the start of the story. It is here I have to caution the reader with a trigger warning regarding depression and suicide: Nora initially discovers the library after determining her life is nothing but endless mistakes and not worth living. (Small spoiler: things get better, provided both she and the reader decide to hang in there.)

Think of it as It's a Wonderful Life marries Quantum Leap, then gives birth to a bouncing baby Sliders, and you’ll start to get the idea.

I’ll admit I shed actual tears towards the end because this book hit me on many different personal levels. There were times when I felt it was written specifically for me.

Maybe it was written for you, too.

Five out of five of the shiniest golden stars.

The Single Biggest Thing to Ever Happen on December 25

Well, friends and family, tomorrow is The Day! The main event, the big cheese, the spicy enchilada, if you will.

I'm referring—as I'm sure you've guessed—to the worldwide celebration of the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton (if one refers to the Julian calendar, naturally).

Oh, but the excitement doesn't stop there! Scientific history is about to be made yet again with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope; a scientific instrument literally decades in the making. I find it kind of awesome that it is launching on such a cardinal date in human history (and incidentally, a year to the month after Arecibo's collapse).

Looks like Santa isn't the only thing to be excited about in the skies this holiday! The gift in your stocking may be a better understanding of the Cosmos itself...

The mission will stream live on NASA TV at around the time parents everywhere will start to need earplugs and a stiff drink.

The True Meaning of Spooky Season

Samhain. All Souls' Day. Día de los Muertos. All Hallows Eve. Halloween. Whichever label you prefer, this is the time of year when the veil between the living and the dead is believed to be at its thinnest. 

Remember to take a few moments to send remembrance and love to those who have passed on. It is, after all, a journey we all will eventually undertake.

The knowledge of our own mortality is what gives our lives their greatest purpose: to Love. A force so powerful that even the veil has no hope of dimming it.

Also—if you can—take a moment to observe the trees. Every Autumn, they teach us a lesson: the importance of letting go. It's okay; nothing (or no one) is ever truly gone. 

Spring will come. Life will renew. The forest will become whole once again.

So. Can. We. Every leaf that sails on the wind is a promise that things are going to be okay.

Whatever day you celebrate, my wish for you is that your heart be as full as a bottomless cauldron filled with big-sized Snickers.

The Terror Felt Around the World

Twenty years ago, as I was getting ready for work, I saw a news report showing an airplane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers. At the time, it seemed like a terrible accident. I thought no more about it as I began my day, consumed as I was then about trivial things. 

Things that would soon be rendered permanently meaningless.

By the time I started my shift, the second plane had hit, and it was then understood as a deliberate attack. I was stuck behind a cash register for most of the day, getting sporadic reports (some true, many exaggerated) from the handful of customers who trickled in. Smartphones weren't a thing. The Internet was something you sat down at a desk and dialed into. The closest television was back in the break room. There I was, wondering why our normally busy store was practically a ghost town—completely oblivious that the world beyond those glass doors was changing forever.

It took me a few hours to believe the towers had actually collapsed. After all, I had pictures of them taped to my wall that I had taken on a band trip only a few years before. They couldn't possibly be gone! When I finally saw the replay during my lunch break, it was like watching a movie. It didn't seem real.

I remember how gas stations and credit card readers kind of just...shut down. The networks were overwhelmed. 

The following week, I happened to be in Florida for my niece's christening. I decided it would be fun, since I was already in Orlando, to visit Universal Studios. I arrived to find a nearly abandoned park. There were no lines for any of the rides. People were terrified, assuming that theme parks might be the next target. In retrospect, I was an idiot for wanting to go, but I was 23. I felt invincible. (Although it was a stupid idea, it was one of the last road trips I ever took with my sister. I'm still glad I went.)

I remember Steph telling me I needed to marry my then-girlfriend so I wouldn't get drafted into the next world war. At the time, the fear didn't seem far-fetched.

My then-girlfriend, who was a native of Uganda, hugged me tight as she whispered, "now it's in your country," with a fear in her eyes I couldn't comprehend. She and her mother had moved to the United States to escape a civil war, only to find terrorism hitting our shores as well.

Until then, I had known nothing but a feeling of complacent safety during my privileged upbringing.

There are no words to describe how it affected...everything. All of the cable channels, including ones like MTV and Cartoon Network, carried 24/7 news coverage. Rumors spread like wildfire. I can still hear late-night panicked calls from close friends saying they heard Nashville was going to be next.

It doesn't feel like 20 years have passed. There are grown adults now who weren't alive then. They have no idea how the world was changed; how we were changed. Watching dozens of people jumping to their deaths live on television to escape being incinerated by flames...well, that sort of horror stays with you.

Some people say it brought everyone together, but that kind of depends on whom you ask. I vividly remember hearing accounts of hate crimes against innocent families who even looked like they might be from the Middle East. There was a lot of anger during that time. While understandable, it was unforgivable. You can't say it brought us together if you exclude some people from us.

That was what scared me then: how grief quickly grew to overwhelming anger. In many ways, it felt like the flames of fear and hatred were purposely fanned. Human beings, as I've recently written, are genetically conditioned for war.

There was a tidal wave of bleakness that drowned everything in a way I had never experienced before. Television shows stopped taping new episodes. Late-night talk shows didn't tell any jokes... if they aired at all.

For a time, it felt like we would never be able to laugh again.

Our innocence—our naivety —was lost.  

Those of you who regularly follow my musings know I generally try to keep things light-hearted, but there are no ways to make light of 9/11. We can hope some positives came out of the whole thing, but at such a tremendous cost of innocent lives—not to mention the pain for those left behind—was it worth the payment?

No. Not even close.

Please take care of yourselves and each other. The need for Love in the world cannot be understated or undervalued.

Lamp Posts

I wish each of us—every day—would take a moment to realize that we see the world around us not for what it is objectively, but rather skewed through a myriad of prisms; each based on our own cultural biases, religious programming, and social upbringing.

Our typical knee-jerk emotional responses to many of the things we see around us are so deeply embedded into our subconscious, we often confuse them as truths without question.

But, why are we who we are? Why do we believe what we believe? Why does someone with a differing point of view get immediately labeled as them or enemy? It is a pretty binary way of thinking for analog organisms, isn't it?

Us vs. Them. We see it every day on the news and on social media. The political arena, in particular, is a culprit as nasty as any comic book villain. Humans are, simply, conditioned for war.

It dates back to our tribal roots. Territorial conflict helped us survive our early days as a species. My tribe created a certain dogma that, in turn, became diametrically opposed to my neighboring tribe's dogma. Over time, our bodies evolved and our brains grew, and this behavior became embedded into our DNA. It was shoved to a back shelf in our shiny-new subconscious, yet it was as loud as ever.

Today, we have something amazing we've never had before: access to information. With the touch of a button, we can explore the cumulative database of all that humanity has learned and achieved. The best part? We are now exposed to points of view and ideologies that differ from the ones with which we were raised, on a level of magnitude unprecedented just a few decades ago. (These differing ideas often get categorized as them out of hand. Watch how our knees jerk! Pavlov would be proud.)

It may not seem like it when perusing literally any social media comments section, but the Internet is one of humanity's greatest inventions. It's not just for porn, cat videos, and dissenting opinions about Star Wars!

Oh, we're not mature enough to use it properly...not yet. See, we still have those prisms in front of our eyes. Those pesky tribal instincts. On the cosmological scale, humans are relatively recent arrivals. We are still in our collective adolescence, prone to outbursts and moodiness when things don't go our way.

You may be thinking I'm anti-religion. I'm not against religion, per se; I think a curious, healthy spirituality is a wonderful thing. Loving others, kindness, and treating your neighbor with respect are the greatest tenets of all of the world's leading faiths—perhaps even those you believe to be them.

The thing is, we're all on the same journey; we're simply on different parts of the road.  Some of us are traveling over mountains, others are trudging through the desert. Our personal viewpoints may differ, yet we all seek truth and understanding of the Universe.

Just as we seek to be understood ourselves.

I've been incredibly fortunate over the years to encounter many teachers who challenged me to think beyond my own prisms. Most of them had no idea they were teaching me anything; I simply listened to their stories. Along the way, I learned to start thinking outside of myself. I call these folks Lamp Posts, because they illuminated a part of my journey for a while. They showed me a part of the road I had never seen before.

I'm not the same person I was a few years ago. Universe willing, I'll be a different person yet by the time this 'ole biological machine stops functioning. (If I'm really fortunate, there will be even more to explore in whatever exists beyond.)

I hope we never stop learning, growing, and revising the idea of Who We Are. We have so much amazing potential.

We have to start by seeing the world—and each other—clearly.

If it's the Journey that Matters, I Want to Ride the Rails

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of train videos on YouTube.

Model trains. Mountain-climbing cogwheel trains. Disneyland’s steam train. Japanese suspended monorails. The Hogwarts Express. Lego sets affixed with GoPros zooming throughout living rooms and terrorizing housecats.

I’ve been fascinated by trains ever since I was little. One entire bedroom of my childhood home was dominated by a miniature town whose primary mode of transportation was an illuminated four-car passenger train. Not that the citizens could actually go anywhere—there was only one station.

Naturally, everything lit up. I remember turning off the lights and staring at the thing for hours on end. (If I still had it, I’d stare at it as an adult, too. In fact, I’d probably already be decorating it for Halloween.)

I’d love to travel across the country via train. One with a sleeper cabin, and preferably a shower. It would be a long trip.

Until that dream becomes manifest, YouTube is free, so my mind and spirit can travel any time I wish. Being something of a nomad by nature, my sense of wanderlust is ignited by views of sweeping vistas rolling leisurely past the cabin windows. I breathe deeply, existing in a space where time is marked only by meals and sunsets, and conversations are timeless.

I imagine simply being, my mind unencumbered by the distracting rhythms and patterns that permeate (and often irritate) my normal, rail-less existence.

The destination isn’t important. Arrival schedules are irrelevant. The outside world becomes part of another life, another place; mere trivialities circumvented by a magical length of transcendent track.

It isn’t a highway that leads to Heaven...it’s a railroad.