Up and down the road

I stand at the kitchen window making dog meals and see the lights of cars passing north and south along the highway up the hill. Every vehicle contains at least one universe, a human with an arrival, destination and eventual departure, every single one an ongoing story with a mix of emotions.

Many are just numb and going through the motions, but out there running up and down the road are joy and sorrow and grief and anger, happy and sad in perhaps equal measure.

Those cold steel containers racing along the road are not empty — there are souls inside, lives being led, and they have to get where they’re going. Most will get there; some will be sidetracked unexpectedly; some will change their minds and change course.

But each is a life, a distinct and valuable life like the one I am living in this earthly vessel that stands still and watches them all go by. I have my reasons for standing here and not racing or even moving for the moment.

I feed the dogs and move to the chair to write down these thoughts while listening to a rock album that was recorded 58 years ago, music I have heard many times over those years, and for some reason this time I hear the separate elements of each song and how they support each other to make the overall sound. The song would not be the song we remember without each element, and the interaction creates what many have called a masterpiece. Replace or change one element — say, a word in the lyrics or a specific instrument — and would it still be a masterpiece, something lesser, or perhaps something even greater?

I don’t want to get up from this reverie and reflection, but there is a day to be lived and I am the only one who can live it, because it is after all my day to be lived, the day that belongs to me and my priorities, just as the souls in the racing vehicles are responsible for how this day will unfold for their sakes.

Where am I going? What am I saying? What am I doing?

What fascinating questions. Let’s find the answers.

The Lord has made this day for me, and for you, and I for one rejoice.

Wanting and having

“It behooves us from time to time to take stock and realize we are already living a life we once only dreamed of.”

I did stop to take my own advice last night, as a Milwaukee Brewers fan watching the clinching game of the World Series — I took a moment to savor the moment. You only get to relish your team’s first championship once, so I drank in the feeling.

Still, I did not stop to write a new blog post for today, and so I dip into the archives for the piece where I wrote that sound (if I say so myself) advice. And, I might add, I now find that wanting your team to win the World Series was not quite as sweet as having your team win the World Series.

Oh, and last but not least, this is another preview of the material you’ll find in my upcoming book What I Came to Say: Making the Most of the Time That’s Left.

Toward the end of “Amok Time,” one of the finest episodes in the original series of Star Trek, Mr. Spock tells the man who desired and now has Spock’s former betrothed, “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”

The first car that I consciously purchased for myself was a used 1974 Ford Pinto wagon with a faux “woody” finish. I liked having a small practical car with space to transport something bigger than a bread box. Still do, actually — I’m currently driving a box chiefly purchased so the dogs have plenty of room to bounce around when we go for a ride.

When I walked into the showroom to ask the dealer about the Pinto, a Studebaker Golden Hawk was sitting on the main floor. It was a gorgeous vehicle, one of my dream cars. My dad was a Studebaker man — that’s all he bought from the late 1940s until they closed the plant in South Bend in 1965. He bought practical Studebakers like the Commander or the Lark; I fantasized about Hawks and Avantis.

“You want to drive her?” the guy asked, seeing the light in my eyes.

I was sorely tempted, but the sticker said $7,500 — a lot of money for a used car in 1975 — and so I confessed I was interested in the $1,750 Pinto out front. That remains the only time in my life that I had a chance to drive a Hawk, or any Studebaker, come to think of it, and I turned it down.

The first new car I bought was a somewhat less practical 1978 Pontiac Firebird. I loved the look, my girl was impressed after the Pinto, and it was a comfortable ride. But when the transmission failed after less than 20,000 miles, the last straw after a series of minor irritations, I realized the wisdom of Spock’s words.

In the 1990s I caught a bug to complete my collection of the Bantam reprints of the original Doc Savage pulp novels from 50-60 years earlier. There were 182 of them in all, published first one at a time, then two in one paperback, and finally a series of 13 omnibus editions collecting four or five of the short novels, between 1964 and 1990 — someone at Bantam was devoted to completing the task.

All the while I was collecting, I would read the stories, at least a dozen a year — it originally was a monthly magazine, after all — until I finally found the last omnibus I was seeking.

The complete collection holds an honored place on my shelf, but years now pass between my reading one Doc Savage novel and the next. I loved the thrill of the hunt, but it turns out that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting.

An old friend who ran a homeless shelter once told me the secret is not to go after what you want, it’s to want what you have. He and his wife never had more than about three months’ living expenses on hand, by design. They seemed like a happy couple.

We always fret more than we should about what we don’t have and think life will be better if only we could have it. It behooves us from time to time to take stock and realize we are already living a life we once only dreamed of.

Midnight madness

When the 1996 Green Bay Packers lost an ugly game to the Dallas Cowboys in mid-November, I got a funny feeling that Green Bay would not lose another game that season. And they didn’t. The Green and Gold went on to win Super Bowl XXXI.

Somewhere around midsummer this year, it started to become clear that this set of Milwaukee Brewers was unlike any that had come before. I began to believe they could win the World Series.

And while Milwaukee’s Game 3 loss to San Diego in the National League Division Series was nowhere near as messy as that loss to the Cowboys, I suddenly had that feeling again — even though I knew they had to get through the formidable Los Angeles Dodgers and the American League champion, I said out loud, “I don’t think the Brewers are going to lose another game.”

I was almost right. Milwaukee won the next eight games and were poised to win a ninth after rookie sensation Cooper Pratt homered in the top of the 12th inning to make it 3-2 early this morning, but the scrappy Tampa Bay Devil Rays pulled out two runs in the bottom of the inning to win 4-3 and send the World Series to a fifth game. The Brew Crew is still one win away from the title.

It’s been many years since a baseball team glued me to the television, but this is quite a team. I like teams that play as a team. These guys seem to love the sport and each other.

There may be no sport as good as baseball for learning how to handle adversity. The best baseball teams in history won more than 110 games, which means they lost 40 or 50 or so. A .300 batting average is usually good enough to get a guy into the Hall of Fame, but that means he failed to get a hit seven times out of ten. The baseball player must fail over and over, shake it off and come back for another shot.

It’s easy to love baseball when your team is on the cusp of winning the World Series, and so I admire the fans who eagerly follow their team for better or for worse, like the avid Brewers fans who remained avid for all of these past 44 years. I have been more of a fair-weather fan in recent years, and so the celebration belongs most to the diehards, but I can enjoy the joy reflected in their faces and in their eyes. What a remarkable baseball season this has been.

And hey, I did say “Brewers in 5” last week. By the time you read this, the guys will have shaken it off and started preparing for another shot tonight.