Blackbird time

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

Red_winged_blackbird_-_natures_pics.jpgEarly March is always a time of keen transition in our part of the world. The cliches about “in like a lion, out like a lamb” seldom hold true in black and white. Furthermore, as a distance runner for more than forty years, I’ve been coddled by lions and stomped by lambs.

Only one thing holds pure and true in the month of March. That is when the blackbirds return. The call of a red-winged blackbird from a fencepost or an overhead wire is a sure enough sign of spring that one can let down ever so slightly.

These are hardy birds, mind you. They frequently fly through snowstorms to get here in Illinois by early March. And what’s the rush? Well, the males want to be ready and on territory by the time the weather actually shifts, typically in late March or early April. Until then, it’s a back and forth process with blackbirds setting up shop on suitable breeding grounds only to flock back together when the weather turns bitter cold again.

Their survival instincts tell them when to turn on the hormones and when to shut them off. Birds in a flock depend on a collective wisdom assembled through millions of years of evolution. The birds we see today are the product of the survivors of experiments in feeding and breeding. Any fatal instinct or turn of bad luck weeds out individuals that don’t get to pass on their breeding stock from one generation to the next.

Weeding out the weak

It’s a whittling process, much like the manner in which the pace of a race weeds out the slower competitors until but a few remain. And as numerous as blackbirds can be in some areas, they still constitute the tip of a spear that goes back millions of years. This is what’s so insulting about the notion that all this nature we can witness is the result of some slapdash effort by God to toss it together in a few days. That worldview places human beings at the top of the order and dumps the rest into some weaker category of existence. But it’s not true. Every living thing we see on this earth is a massively refined product of time and yes, of tradition.

That’s why birds of feather flock together. It’s tradition that keeps birds and all living things alive. It may not be cognizant tradition in the manner of which we’re accustomed to thinking, but it is tradition just the same.

The other way around

If anything it is humans who imitate nature, not the other way around. Those running routes we established in college all had names. We branded them after landmarks found along the way. Thus one of our favorite running routes in college was named Wonder Left after the sign for the Wonder Cave billboard at the counter corner of Route 52 and Meadowlark Lane north of Decorah, Iowa.

We’d proceed from campus up the long hill out of the valley and typically face a north wind in the spring season. There was nothing blocking that wind for another 500 miles north. It was all low hills and cornfields from us to the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota.

The wind would roar in our ears as we plied our way through it. Yet somewhere along the way, I’d hear the sound of a red-winged blackbird calling from a wire. And I’d think, “This is only temporary.”

April chill

Typically, it was. Yet some springs winter would hold on well into April. Which drove us to manic lengths trying to fix our hopes on some day to come where we could actually run outside in shorts, not baggy sweats. One chill April day that was marginal enough that we could actually run in shorts in the high forties or low fifties, some at the back of the pack started up a chant, “The weather sucks! We want spring!”

This went on for a mile or two before we arrived back on campus so sick of the damp air that someone stopped and yanked off their shorts and ran past the whole team. That pair of pale butt checks set off a springtime alarm of sorts. We all stripped naked and held our running stuff in our hands to gather at the door of the college union. Then on the count of three, we all spilled into the cafeteria stark naked and running in a furious clambering line.  “The weather sucks! We want spring!”

He who hesitates is lost

But one guy hesitated back at the door. He was twenty yards behind when he finally decided to make a break for it and follow us naked through the cafeteria. Big mistake. Once the crowd inside the cafeteria was warned, a few football players or some other gathering of big guys was ready for the next wave if it was going to come. They leapt up and grabbed our teammate and tied him to a post with his own clothes. He was a shy dude by nature, you see, so that had to be agony.

Years later our little Luther College became known for a ritual called Naked Soccer . The whole notion makes me very proud of my alma mater. Granted, it was probably snuffed out, a sign that the administration feared the seemingly inevitable incident of raw sexual harassment or worse. But I still don’t believe that getting naked is, on its own, a true crime.

Butt cheeks on patrol

It was the right thing to do back when the weather simply wouldn’t cooperate, and our little band of blackbirds was sick of migrating through the chill of March. Now that butt cheeks are far more common in the public eye, the only thing scandalous about the notion is the exposure of a penis or two. And in the case of men, that generally turns out to be a shrunken proposition when the air is cool.

But we did have one teammate that simply couldn’t run naked due to the fact that he was simply too well-endowed. That made it even funnier to most of us when he had to stick with his jock when the rest of us were stark naked.

Such are the antics and traditions of men and blackbirds. Driven by hormones against the raging spring winds, some of us show our epaulettes while others have to keep them under cover. Nature is a patient teacher however, willing to wait out the vagaries of all this behavior to find out who really wants to survive, and why.

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What I’d go back and say to my fifteen-old-self

Posted on March 7, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

Unincorporated MeTurning fifteen years old tends to be a watershed moment in life. The freshman blues abate and the fear of junior year obligations is not yet upon you. Hormones rage but the looks to complement those desires are perhaps not all there.

Thinking back to that point in life, I managed to find success in the things I loved to do. My abilities in art were starting to take shape. An interest in wildlife and birding was deepening. I already loved writing and sucked at proofreading, which proves that some things never change. That is the challenge of some sort of attention deficit disorder. I prefer to call it artistic deficit disorder. In any case, it made some aspects of school at every level a real challenge.

Moods

Like most fifteen-year-olds, I could also be rather moody. Yet my brothers and I loved to make each other laugh, and so did my friends. So the pendulum tended to swung, sometimes to extremes, depending on the circumstance.

The summer before my sophomore year in high school I’d grown angry at the world to the point that I drew a picture of myself surrounded by curses and promises to show people that I wasn’t the skinny, worthless kid they thought I was. Yes, the drama was mostly inside my head. But it felt real enough to me that it motivated me beyond what everyday likes and desires might do. So I put that anger to work.

I believe there’s a little inherent anger that exists in all of us. So thank God I found the sport of running when I did. It helped wick away the angst of being a half-formed teenager. My relationship with teammates was crucial to keeping my self-esteem intact.

See, the early 1970s were by definition of culture a highly critical, cynical period in this world. It felt like much of America was immersed in a chiaroscuro painting. The dark and light was visible in the news. New York City was a pit. The Vietnam War raged on. Nixon was a dark soul and Gerald Ford was a dim light.

Burning up inside

FirefightersI was not immune to all that. Nor was I immune to the teasing of friends and enemies. It made me burn inside, and want to set fire to the world any way I could. My father dearly wanted his boys to avoid the likes of his own academic struggles, but he chose on many occasions to wear us down with exasperation rather than build us up through communication. So I sought consolation with other father figures in life. We all do that to some extent.

Truly, my dad tried in so many ways to help us. But the back and forth aspects of his personality and pressure-filled financial and work circumstances made it tough for him to act confidently. That turned our lives inside out at times.

There is no question he was a good man at heart. He helped me make many good decisions about life that were right in line with who I was. He helped me sell my paintings when I was starting out. He supported my choice to run a paper route, and drove me around on really cold mornings, a rare occasion to talk a little. But when I was fifteen, he also wanted to chop my hair down to the roots and had little patience for other choices I wanted to make on my own.

Advice from the future

As I look back on those days, I realize there were better ways to respond to all those situations. So this is what I’d tell my fifteen-year-old self if I could go back to 1972 and say “Listen, Chris, I have a few things to tell you…”

  1. Girls can be your friend. That sounds simple enough in concept. But the very real friendships I made with girls were often called into question by my male friends who questioned why I would want friendships from them rather than trying to turn them into girlfriends (and thus get sex.) But I loved my female friends because they talked with me about things in different ways than my guy friends. I had no sisters, so I struggled with the whole  ‘girls as people’ perspective one gets by having female siblings. The structure of their bodies and garments and hair and patterns of speech were intimidating to me. So I’d go back to tell my young self to just relax. Girls will like you if you make them laugh. But also listen. Pay attention to what they’re saying. And care. That’s the biggest point of all, to truly care.
  2. Be patient and live in the moment. Teens (like me at the time) tend to bounce from one source of stimulation to the next. Back in 1972, it was always one sports contest after another. Then a dance would come along. Then a bonfire. We’d arrive at these encounter points looking for who-knows-what to happen. It always felt like there was pressure to prove yourself every second you were alive. I’d tell my fifteen-year-old self to let that stuff roll. Great things happen when you’re not trying to turn every moment in life into a big event. And don’t be so goddamned shy.
  3. Stop fighting yourself. Let success happen. Gosh, I’d get nervous before big running meets or games. But the truth about nerves is that there are two kinds. There is the nervousness that comes with wanting to achieve based on the hard work you’ve put in. Then there are nerves that come about from having a fear of failure. It seemed I had little control over which of these nerve sets would arrive and when. But I experienced both, and my advice to a fifteen-year-old me would be to learn the reasons why I was a “good nervous” at times and not let the “bad nerves” take over.
  4. Do the hard stuff first. Procrastination is the royal bain of every teenager. Putting off homework that was hard was a 24/7 habit in my case. The simplest lesson I’d share with my teenage self is to get the hard stuff out of the way. It’s a lesson learned from years of practice now, but I sure could have used it in 1972. And don’t be afraid to ask for help.
  5. Let anger motivate you, but don’t let it rule you. It’s easy to get pissed off in this world. I still do. To my credit back in the day, I used anger at times to run harder and prove to myself that people could not get the best of me. But as life often teaches, the force of anger can come back to bite you. When anger gets mixed with a little anxiety or depression, things can get ugly fast. My own children have at times had to help me with this. But thanks to growth and time, things are better. Going back in time, I’d simply tell my fifteen-year-old self to figure out what the source of anger really is. And is it justified, or is it merely an excuse not to deal with some sort of fear or insecurity? I think my fifteen-year-old self would actually listen to that. After all, I kind of know the guy.

And that’s it. Perhaps life could have been a bit smoother with a little advice from my future self. Which simply means it make sense to listen to the conscience of my present self, and not make life so complex when it doesn’t have to be.

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Life and death in the March wind

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

Bird Feeders.jpgIt snowed here in Illinois this morning. The birds gathered around our feeder were manic for the little bits of food that remained after the last refill. I drove down to Woodman’s grocery story and brought back bags of bird seed, some suet, a woodpecker block and a mesh bag of thistle.

“There, you little bastards, eat hearty,” I told them.

So the red-winged blackbirds and the grackles spaced themselves around the base of the feeder to avoid competition. Then a few female red-wings showed up. They’ve arrived on schedule about two weeks after the males.

But they could not avoid the inch-wide snowflakes coming down from the sky. Their peeps and warning calls filled the chill air, and then everything went silent. We heard the rush of wings as birds scattered into flight. The shape of a hawk swept past the kitchen window and five seconds later a big old red tail was perched up in the cottonwoods across our lawn. For the next fifteen minutes the blackbirds hung tight in the willows where that the red-tail could not get them. Whether birds can tell the difference between a bird-hunter like a Cooper’s hawk and a rabbit slammer like the red-tail, it is hard to say. The smaller birds stayed hunched and hidden just the same.

Then a few forgot all about the hawk and flew back down to feed. Like the families who lived by the sea in the Pearl Buck story titled The Big Wave, the birds of this world live from one threat to the next. They forget their last fear in order to go about the business of eating.

Dove feathersSome of them get eaten as a result. The feathers of a mourning dove lay strewn around the lawn twenty feet from the feeder this morning. Doves are fast food fare for Cooper’s hawks, who come winging around the house as if it powers then with centrifugal force. The birds at the feeder don’t stand much chance against a hawk flying at that rate.

Even if a small bird makes a getaway run, those Cooper’s hawks are built for flying through the woods in fast pursuit of their prey. Birds of the accipter family such as Cooper’s and sharp-shinned and goshawks are all capable of turning their bodies and wings on an axis to slip between the columns of thin trees. They make the adventures of Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible movie look like Amateur Hour.

Even if they miss in their initial pursuit they are not above landing on the ground and running around a bush to chase out the sparrows or other songbirds who think they’re safe in the confines of a dense hedge or juniper. But they’re wrong. The Coop will harass and trot around the bush (I’ve seen them do this) until the little birds panic and the hawk darts after them to grab one of them in mid-air.

Then the hawk pins its prey to the ground or carries them up to a tree limb where the plucking can begin. They clean away the bothersome feathers and expose the flesh. Then they eat it raw. If their prey is not dead yet, and this happens more frequently than one might imagine, the starling or woodpecker pinned under the hawks long toes strains with the agony of being eaten alive. I’ve witnessed that too.

Yes, nature is red in tooth and claw and beak. This idea that there was ever a time in history where that was not the case is absurd. I’ve read the musings of creationist websites that insist that all creatures were at one point vegetarian. That includes giant dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex, who supposedly only developed an appetite for red meat “after the fall” or “after the flood.” Granted, the bible doesn’t specifically mention animals eating each other.  But it does say something about “I give you these plants for food.” So they the creationists take that to literally mean even animals with teeth designed for killing and ripping flesh for food were somehow content to gnosh on leaves and berries. And that’s why I think creationists and biblical literalists are terribly stupid people. They literally make shit up to justify their fears that their worldview has become irrelevant. Anachronism is like that. It can’t deal with the present, so it focuses upon the past as the only source of truth. And it’s a lie.

Common Grackle.pngWhen it comes to seed and plant eaters, it seems even the birds don’t abide by the rules doled out to their kind. In fact, the opposite it often true. Creatures that we typically associate with eating seeds are not above taking meat into their diet. On many occasions I’ve seen birds called grackles gathered around a road kill. They’ll even eat their own kind.

And one time while sitting on the front steps with my son, just chatting and watching traffic go by on a spring afternoon, a grackle flew down and pounced on a house sparrow. Then it bit its head off and ate the damn thing.

But crossover meat-eating is not just limited to birds.  I’ve also seen a grown deer chomp a small bird right out of a mist net and gulp it down like a chunk of beef jerky. Classically, we think of deer as relatively peaceful vegetarians. But nature doesn’t always abide by human rules or expectations.

Among wild creatures, none of this natural carnage is the result of anger or any other emotion. The predator and prey relationship is as old as the microbes that commenced the long route to multicellular life on earth. It has always been an “eat or be eaten” world. Female praying mantis breed with males and then eat them. I have met a few women in my time who would like to have dined on the flesh of a feckless male. Even Hall & Oates sang about Maneaters.

But the interesting part of that formula is that at some point, human beings evolved a conscience and a moral code about how to behave toward each other. It doesn’t say so in the bible, but we can assume from the Thou Shalt Not Kill commandment means we’re not supposed to eat each other either Granted, in emergencies even people of conscience have been forced to dine on human flesh. But even then, some people are pretty choosy about what they will or will not eat.

Crow in Flight.pngIn some of the races in which I’ve competed over the years, I’ve been the predator tracking down the prey ahead of me on the course. There is little remorse on those occasions when we’re the dominant ones. We all seem to love it when we have the chance to vanquish our competition and eat them alive.

But I also remember races in which I was being chased down by competitors. It’s an awful feeling knowing you’re going to get passed and left behind.

Out on the open roads, there is no more helpless feeling than being a solo rider up ahead on the road when a group of riders spies you. Few cyclists can keep ahead of a group of 10-20 cyclists riding as a group. They become the amoeba waiting to suck up every last  bit of your DNA. They swarm around you as they pass. Then you get spit out the back like a piece of genetic waste. Sometimes you’re lucky to survive with your soul intact.

That’s a horrible feeling. But once in a while if you play it right and spare yourself the drag of fear or the tingling feeling behind your ears, you can save energy and slip into the group and be pulled along. Then you’re a bird in a flock where the hawk of the wind can’t get to you. The whirr of tires all around you is both comforting and compelling. You find your space or position on a wheel and can concentrate on becoming part of the whole. Suddenly you’re part of the predatory pack on the hunt. You might even catch sight of another rider ahead on the road.

If you have a bit of conscience left, you secretly hope they’ll notice the pack and get swept up as well. Or perhaps you become merciless as a Cooper’s hawk on a cold March day. You glance at the rider you’ve just caught with a bit of disdain. The formerly powerless can quickly become the greatest of persecutors when given the opportunity to slaughter others at will.

There’s a moral lesson in that for all of us. People of real conscience never lose compassion toward even our competitors. As Jesus once said, “Love your enemies.” I think he meant something more than offering forgiveness. I think he show us that real strength and faith comes from a will to bring others into the fold of strength.

To share power is to share love. Everything else is just cannibalism. But beware the fellow with the gammy leg.

 

 

 

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What stresses you out?

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

GASP1Standing at the starting line of the Gasparilla 8K in Tampa, I had cleared my mind of just about everything in preparation for the race. But that had taken some work. My wife’s race started at six in the morning, so there was a bit of waiting around to do. Chasing out onto the course to see her pass by was a tiring run of a couple miles. It was hot out, and the thought of using energy any other way than running my race seemed like a dumb idea.

So I lay there half-snoozing on a row of uncomfortable chairs where a sports massage would soon be doling out muscle rubs for all those seeking help after their half marathon race.

That’s where my brain went to work digging up things to worry about.

That shouldn’t happen on a vacation trip, but it does. As a person who normally deals with inherent anxiety, I’ve grown adept at understanding that the anxious brain loves opportunities like that. “Why not fill the time?” it asks, as the monkey mind goes to work.

That’s why I’ve also developed a set of baseline strategies to keep the anxious mind in line. The first thing to understand is that typically, there’s nothing truly to worry about. So I use the phrase, “The drama is all inside your head” to cope with worry.

Pressure is self-inflicted

Former middle-distance world record holder Rick Wolhuter, who hails from my hometown of St. Charles, Illinois, once put it well. “Pressure is self-inflicted.”

That was way back in 1979 or so that he said that. But not much has changed about that simple principle. There are healthy kinds of pressure you put on yourself. That helps you train and prepare for a race or other event. There are also unhealthy kinds of pressure, the kind you let creep into your brain that is full of self-doubt and fear.

That’s the “drama inside your head.” You need to be the director of your own play, you see. Don’t let the many actors jumping around the stage of your thoughts take over the scene and ruin the whole play.

Acting the parts

In order to control the drama, it needs to be separated into parts. It’s like taking a stage full of manic-depressive actors aside and talking them down or up from their fear of doing their parts the right way.

The Family Budget Actor needs to be pulled aside where real money matters can be considered. Tally up the speech that actor has been practicing and break it down. Parse out what can be done immediately but know what needs to come next.

The Weepy Woman of Past Failures

That’s how the process works. Beware the Weepy Woman of Past Failures. She can drag the whole play to a screeching halt. And talk about drama! She’s wail about the reasons why you lost a job thirty years ago and try to make it seem like you’re in the same situation now. “Ohhhh nnooooooo!” she’ll moan. “I’ve seen this play beforrreeee!”

That’s how it goes. Round and round with ruminations and anxieties. All while you’re sitting there waiting for an 8K to start. That’s a pretty sorry mindset, but the anxious know how it works. Most of us figure out healthy strategies to calm the mind and quell the nerves.

Fears within

Because you really don’t want that stuff roiling around in your mind during a race. It’s counterproductive to the thinking you really need to do in order to compete at your best. Besides, there are specific fears within the realm of swimming, riding and running that need to be addressed in the moment. Open water? Lots of hills? Heat or cold on the run? Yes these are legitimate concerns. So it helps to clear the mind.

It can also help to understand the things that stress you out in everyday life. Here’s a list of my little vexations. You’ve surely got your own. Do yourself a favor and write them down on paper. It is enormously empowering to have that list in front of you so you can organize the actors and put your drama in its place. Be the director of your fate.

  1. Passwords. Keeping track of passwords for websites and bill-paying stresses me out. They have to be changed all the time and it’s hard to keep them all in one place. Then you go to pay a bill and realize it’s the wrong or outdated password you just changed and have to start all over again. Then the site tells you: “You cannot use a previous password for this site.” Aaaaahhhhhhh!
  2. Social media. The stress of participating in social media is now being recognized as an actual detriment to our emotional health. When people post about their success and such, it puts pressure on us to compete. Then there are political fights, arguments over issues and flat out volumes of information to take in. Stressful.
  3. Smartphones. Our devices actually function to re-wire our brains. All that instant response amounts to chemical changes in the brain that function like sugar-cravings or even drug addiction. Dopamine is a real thing. It produces cycles that we don’t even know we’re enduring.
  4. Diet and nutrition. It’s really hard to eat well these days. There is sugar in everything we eat, it seems. Then there’s the debate over which is worse for our bodies, carbohydrates or fat? It all adds up to a daily stress less in trying to avoid eating things that will kill us.
  5. Sex as a taboo. Don’t get me wrong. Sex is wonderful. Most of us appreciate a healthy sex life. I think it’s healthy that the buttocks of the world are no longer considered taboo, and that nipples and even a camel toe or dick through a pair of shorts is no longer scandalous. By contrast, it is the repression of healthy body image the realities of sex and gender and orientation that are vexing society.
  6. Politics. You all know my views. These are devastating times and there is not a day where the Orange Liar does not perpetrate another scandal against the Republic.
  7. Dreams. Are just weird. They take all these anxieties and combine them in a Moulin Rouge of tortured sleep.
  8. Fears. There is no greater stress than basic fear. As FDR once said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” But that’s the hardest thing in the world to manage.
  9. Work. I love my current job and it is relatively stress-free except for the part where social media drives opinions that simply aren’t true, and it’s my job to provide accurate information to quell them.
  10. Age. I don’t really stress emotionally over age, but it is a stress on its own as the body changes and the face wrinkles and time works its wonders.

Fortunately, there is one sure cure for all these stresses. And that is gratitude. Being grateful for what you have and what you can do rather than what you can’t is the surest way to get your stress actors to settle down and behave.

Be grateful. Then be calm. Find peace. And go run or ride or swim. Those are the best pathways to gratitude.

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What goes on in the mind of a runner?

Posted on March 1, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

People who don’t like to run or find it boring often ask the same question: “What do you think about all that time?”

Of course there’s no pat answer to that question. Runners think about a lot of things during races. Some dwell on their misery and prefer to disassociate any way they can. Others focus in on their bodily response, checking all their “go” signs like a race car driver listening to the roar of the engine.

The bulk of us fall somewhere between. Our brains might start with some sort of focus but as the fatigue piles up, the mind starts to wander.

GASP1.jpeg

Recently I competed in the Gasparilla 8K down in Tampa, Florida. The race went well enough I suppose. But the race images that just arrived from Marathon Foto made me realize there must have been a lot of things going through my head during the race.

For one thing, my face was bright red. That’s a sure sign that one’s noggin’ is about to explode from all that thinking. Or, it was just hot out.

GASP 10I seem to be checking my watch quite a bit. That means I was either trying to stay on pace or wishing the darn race would be over.

My foot plant was alternately dynamic and flat. Which means I’m really willing to compromise when necessary.

As for the length of my running shorts, I’m neither 1980s or fully 2000s. For men my age, it’s an obligation to cover up what you got and still look like you can run.

At times during the race I looked determined. At other times, nearly defeated. Well, that’s racing for you.

Of course some of these pictures were taken during the first part of the race, when the breeze was still coming off the bay. I was flying then, ahead of pace. Ready to luck into a really good time.

GASP 3.jpeg

But when we turned around, the heat swooped in to suck the life out of us. There’s not a soul that could avoid the humidity either. Rumor has it that Satan even pulled out of the race at that point. It was too hot. He might have been dressed like a pirate.

GASP 5.jpeg

That right there is the look of one overheated runner jogging home to the finish line. Only four guys my age beat me to it. Rumor has it they all melted like wax into the gutters and drained away to the bay. So I win after all. And that’s what I think about that.

 

 

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No grumping allowed

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

Cudworth results.jpgLast night around 2:00 am I awoke thinking about yesterday’s blog and a passage to which I referred to the feeling of loss one can accumulate with age. This is what I wrote the feelings I had while lining up to race an 8K and realized that my time for winning the overall was long ago, and past:

But I’d have won that 8K race by a minute or so any number of times during my running career, in quite similar weather conditions. It would be so sweet to win these things again. I won’t lie. I feel like something’s been stolen from me in life.

That last sentence leans toward being embittered. But that’s not how I feel or think. In fact, the words that followed describe the fact that it is our specific job in life to not let bitterness begin to rule our consciousness.

But that’s how life goes. Life is a long series of giving things away. The truly successful learn how to go through that process gracefully, or take pleasure in helping others to achieve.

Bitter times

Spending a few days down in Florida put me in close proximity to the most recent school shooting. The governor is considering changes to Florida gun laws in response to the slaughter that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It was an embittered young man who stocked up on weapons and ammunition, carried them to the school he once attended, struck the fire alarm so kids would rush out of class, and murdered 17 of his former peers with a military-grade weapon that tears the organs of the body apart because that is what it was designed to do.

Answering questions

A few days ago I watched a video in which former President Barack Obama answered a question from an audience member about the Constitution and gun control. The guy asking the question was likely more than sixty years old from his appearance. He sported the classic white chin beard and somewhat portly physique of the retired and not doing that much but hobby stuff. And he was concerned about the President coming to take away his guns.

Obama made clear the purpose of gun control. “We’re not trying to take anyone’s guns away,” he said…and I paraphrase because he said this multiple times and in many different ways during his eight years in office. Yet every time there was a mass shooting the segment of the American population that constitutes fearful gun zealots would go out and buy even more weapons.  Their brand of anxious logic apparently told them that each new mass shooting would be the one that turned the tide against the Wild West mentality that has taken over America.

Quiet conversations

I’ve had many quiet conversations about guns with guys like the one that stood up in the audience and tried to act rationally while addressing Obama about his fear of someone taking his guns away. I’ll leave that component of the argument right there, because that sense of loss thing, and fears about someone “stealing your rights” is the crux of everything going wrong with America today.

The version of “gun rights” that people now seek to defend are only a recent phenomenon in America. A few conservative court decisions backed by the NRA have turned gun legislation inside out and upside down. Now the selfish beneficiaries of those rights are not willing to back away from this perversion even when fourteen-year-old kids are being slaughtered in school hallways, concertgoers are murdered from the temple tower of a hotel and churchgoers are blasted as they commune in the House of God.

Did someone say something about “God-given gun rights?”

The gun lobby has even succeeded in preventing the Center for Disease Control from doing research about the effects of guns on American society. Think about that for a moment: the gun lobby won’t even let the nation’s leading medical research arm study and discover facts about the guns in this country. That says a bunch about the lie that the conservative interpretation of the Second Amendment has become.

Criminal acts

That’s not just insanity. That’s a criminal level of obfuscation. Thousands of people are dying every year from gun violence, mass shootings and suicide. Now our own government has banned all reasonable research on the subject because the gun lobby and its kept politicians know the truth about gun violence would force the nation to come to terms with an addiction to guns that now vexes America. It is an ungodly and perverted brand of rights that America has chosen to adopt as law.

That’s right: our current gun laws and a patent political denial of their neo-liberal influence on society are an absolute perversion of our Constitution. For centuries the words “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state…” were rightly interpreted to mean that the United States never wanted guns to get out of control.

chicago no guns signBut the gun lobby successfully sold a new version of the Second Amendment on the false narrative that the proliferation of guns in the hands of private citizens is equal to liberty. That’s a lie, of course.

Guns now likely outnumber human beings in America. But worse, when the legislation banning automatic weapons expired, it unleashed a beast that ensures police are outgunned on any street they patrol. Private citizens now have to fear for their lives in formerly safe places such as churches, schools, concert venues and anywhere else an embittered individual unleashes hell on those he knows or doesn’t know.

There is no sane person in America who can claim that anything about this pattern of embitterment and violence is constitutional. The United States Constitution was written by people who did not by nature trust the mob rule of the general populace. Nor did they embrace the vigilante instincts of the unregulated militia.  That’s why the Second Amendment was written with a brake system in place, or the governor on an engine that might otherwise overheat.

That’s also why they formed a republic, not a pure democracy as a form of government. But our political system has been overrun by mob rule, and our current version of gun laws is a reflection of that.

Embittered populace

So here we sit, with an embittered populace ruling the narrative and gun violence ruling the weekly headlines. All because the fashionably embittered authoritarian voting bloc fell for the promises made by a reality star President that has likely never really read the Constitution, much less understood its history in any ideological sense.

Instead he depends on a brand of false heroics to depict himself as a hero for American values. These are lauded by the mob of terminally sentimental and fearfully irrelevant members of the population who believe that whatever Trump says is more important that the office he occupies or the responsibilities it entails. This is salacious stuff, and a high risk when we consider that his position makes him Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful military.

He apparently holds a high opinion of himself when it comes to his personal level of heroism and fitness. As reported across multiple sites on the Internet, this is what our supposed President said in response to the shootings in Florida:

“I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon,” Mr Trump told a group of state governors gathered at the White House.

Mr Trump also said it was “disgusting” that officers reportedly did not confront the suspect on 14 February.

The massacre was the second-deadliest shooting at a US school.

“I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too,” said Mr Trump on Monday of his assertion that he would have rushed into the school.

He added: “You never know until you’re tested.”

This from a man not exactly known for his military service record, and a guy who received multiple deferments due to bone spurs.

Bitter man

Trump genuinely seems embittered and defensive whenever people question his qualifications, level of intelligence or bravery.

Yet those who support the man seem to do so in a fashion almost universally separated from any factual basis for his claims. The instinct seems to stem from rooting for what the man supposedly stands for rather than anything he has either said and done. So he’s free to lie about his wealth and success even when the facts of his multiple bankruptcies and fealty to Russian bankers becomes well-known. Even his elaborate combover hairstyle covers up a bald spot that had to be surgically addressed less his vanity and virility come into question. The man is the walking, talking embodiment of embitterment.

Outgunned

So the thing we know about Donald Trump is that he embraces the embittered as a political party unto its own. If people are pissed and need a voice about something, Trump is their man. So the guy who wants guns and feels like someone is going to take them away has Donald Trump as an ally. But the guy outside that school who had a gun yet knew he was massively outgunned just by listening to the mayhem inside? Trump doesn’t like that guy. The guy was no hero, for sure. But he may have sensed in some way that the situation truly was hopeless. That is the reality the gun nuts will never admit.

Captured and tortured

IMG_2659.jpgTrump didn’t like John McCain either, for getting captured and tortured. Was that McCain’s fault, or are the circumstances of war (or school shootings for example) often out of the control of an individual.

There many kinds of war. Donald Trump also doesn’t like women who recall his sexually abusive behavior. Nor does he like the porn stars who were paid by his lawyer to keep their mouths shut after The Donald had affairs behind the back of his former and/or current wives.

And Donald Trump doesn’t like accepting the idea that the Russians committed an act of war by interfering the election through which our President was pushed into power? He’s bitter about the very notion that such influence might have affected the outcome.

Embittered and in power

Thus Donald Trump is the perfect symbol for all those embittered souls who find solace against the idea that they’ve “lost” something in the America they think they once knew. Yet most of the Make America Great Again philosophy center arounds claims to “rights” that never really existed in the first place.

The nation has turned itself inside out looking for answers to the question of why mass shootings keep taking place, and the answer is simple: bitter, selfish people are never satisfied until someone pays a price for the pain they claim to own.

 

 

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Vacation racin’ in the human salad

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

Chris at GasparillaThe starting pen at the Gasparilla 8K was low on competitors lined up in the 6:30-7:30 per mile pace. I’d started far at the back of the pack lined up for the race, which numbered more than 5,000. It was the last of the four scheduled races of the weekend. The 15K, the original and flagship race of the Gasparilla series, has been won by a local Floridian named Eric Montalvia in a flashy 46:09, a 4:57 per mile pace. The 5K that day was won by Tampa’s Taylor McDowell in a more pedestrian 15:58, a 5:08 per mile pace.

The Half Marathon attracted an international field competing for an $8,000 first prize. Elkanah Kiet ran 4:51 per mile for a 1:03:38 winning time. The women’s race was a highly competitive affair with Sara Hall besting Stephanie Bruce in a record time of 1:12:00 to 1:12:01. That’s a close finish after 13.1 miles of running.

That left the 8K to be contested, and I wistfully watched the top runners as they were ushered into the lead pen ahead of us. Near me stood a lean young woman in bun hugger shorts and a set of sleek racing flats, a sleek young kid with a mop of loose blonde hair. Then there were the requisite overachievers, fit older guys with silver hair on their heads and veinous legs.

My own legs look good enough for a sixty-year-old man. They don’t look that much different from my legs at fifty years of age, or forty. The skin has started to get crepey, I’ll admit, but from a distance that isn’t all that visible.

But my feet and knees require orthotics to run distance these days. I’ve worn the set I have for six or seven years now. They’re effective but they’re heavy. I can’t step to the line anymore with nothing but a set of superlight racing flats the way I once did. But my New Balance 880s are firm for a training shoe, and there are signs of shoe wear only under the forefoot, because that’s where I run on them. So I haven’t given up the ghost when it comes to running the best I can.

Sue as Gasparilla.jpgThe morning had started early on Gasparilla day. My wife Sue was running the half-marathon, and finished in just over 2:20 on a morning that heated up so fast it earned the Yellow warning flag from race officials. The Gulf breeze came from the South and made the Bayside stretched tolerable while headed in that direction. But when racers turned back north, there was nothing to wick off the heat.

In between, it was the stink of a low tide that filled the nose. So it was an earthy, funky, sweaty experience for everyone involved. But you couldn’t really tell that until you were so far into the race it was too late to really adjust or adapt.

I made all that worse by hitting the first-mile marker in 6:59. My goal was to run 7:30s for the day, but that first mile felt easy enough I decided to keep rolling. Then came two miles at 14:15. Somewhere between that mile point and the turnaround, the leaders were coming back in the other direction. I tried to gauge how fast they going. They looked respectable, but not quick. Indeed, the winner finished in 27:19. The kid’s name is Jake Turner and he is just 16 years old. He was the mop-headed kid I’d seen at the start. His pace was a creditable 5:29 per mile. On his way to great things, most likely.

But I’d have won that 8K race by a minute or so any number of times during my running career, in quite similar weather conditions. It would be so sweet to win these things again. I won’t lie. I feel like something’s been stolen from me in life.

But that’s how life goes. Life is a long series of giving things away. The truly successful learn how to go through that process gracefully, or take pleasure in helping others to achieve.

Sometimes we forget to abide what we try to share with others. I didn’t take my own advice seriously this morning. Going out at 7:00 pace was a bit stupid. But with all the waiting around from 6:00 am in the morning when Sue’s race began to 9:15 when my race began, it was a waiting game and a give-and-take with wanting to lie down and save Jesus Guy.jpgmy legs and wanting to warm up enough to overcome the sore Achilles I’d created by wearing sandals on our vacation jaunts. Everything we do has a cost. At least that’s what the guy carrying the Jesus sign tried to tell us. “The wages of sin is death.”  Did Jesus really have such bad grammar?

 

I wasn’t seeing God the last 1.5 miles, but while crossing the finish line I felt dizzy to be honest. Some gal handed me a cold wet towel and pointed to a handy seat, and I took it. Drank some warm water. Looked back down the road at all the other runners trundling home. So many bodies. So many people in this world. Legs and arm and butts and breasts and kits and hats and bottles and brains. The human salad. I’m just another tomato these days, but it’s who I am.

Mop Head.jpg

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Explosive evidence

Posted on February 22, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

Light bulbHeading into my senior year in college, I was desperate for a summer job when my best friend’s father offered me summer work as a janitor at a building called International Towers. It sat at the junction of Cumberland  Road and I-90 outside Chicago. From the roof of the building you could see downtown to the Hancock and Sears Tower. It looked like you could reach out your arm and drop a car right in the middle of it.

I had no idea that three years later I’d live in the middle of that hot mess in a shared apartment overlooking Clark Street. I was still so frightfully naive at that point in life I never imagined living in the city. But we did it. And I don’t regret it. That’s for sure.

Hard work

Being naive was a lot of work as I recall. There was always some stupid mystery lurking around the corner. Still, I had managed to take a few steps toward maturity that summer. First I hired a barber to cut off the long, thick head of hair that had been my trademark for several years in college. Shaved the Lasse Viren beard, too. Got contact lenses and a tan and looked a bit more like I knew what the fuck I was doing in life.

And then I went to work as a janitor.

The Polish folks who worked in the building hated the fact that I was hired in place of one of their buddies. I saw them arguing with my friend’s father (who managed the building) at the entrance tabout a week after I started. He stood there stiff and sullen, listening to their complaints. Then he shook his head and walked back inside. “They’re pissed that I hired you,” he told me. “But don’t worry about it. That’s for me to decide, not them.”

So I came to work everyday and reported to a little wizened guy named Andy. I’ve told this story before on my blog. How he hated his job and his nagging wife. But Andy was a good man to me. And generally I was a good worker. Except for the day of the explosion.

415wmJTIFML._SY300_QL70_I’d been told by someone (not Andy) to go pick up some boxes of fluorescent lights being discarded during a redesign of an office way up near the top of the building. They were long lights, probably 72″, and there were a dozen of them in each box. So I gathered them up on a cart and hauled them all down to the basement to get rid of them.

One-by-one I took the large boxes out and slid them into the trash compactor. When everything was unloaded, I walked out the door and hit the button to set the trash compactor to work. Those bulbs all got crushed at once, and the noise inside sounded like a bomb went off. And I won’t lie, it was quite a satisfying sound.

But to avoid responsibility, I hustled out of the hallway with the cart and made my way to the stairs to hide out. I heard a few people came charging into the compactor zone. A thin, fine dust had risen up like the exhalation of some exhausted dragon. There were voices and some shouting. And then it died down.

For the rest of the day I kept out of sight. Then at 5:00 pm I quickly made my way to the car to meet up with the gal who commuted with me to the building. I don’t know if my boss Andy covered for me that day or what, but nothing was ever said about my trash compactor blunder.

Sweet commute

That evening I climbed into the car for the drive home and was greeted by the sweet face of the gal that also been given a job by my best friend’s father. By coincidence she was also a runner and actually something of a track star. She was short, probably 5’0″ at best, but what a leg turnover! She was also quite beautiful with light freckles on her cheeks and wispy blonde hair on her head.

But she was having a summer fling with my best friend, and I with one of her friends. So it all felt delicious and young and stupid at the same time. Most days I’d drop her off at her house with a platonic goodbye and drive the rest of the way home to my place with naughty thoughts going through my head. Then I’d muster my running gear together and go for a run the best I could before settling in for dinner.

It was an hour’s drive one way to that summer job. Often it took even longer to come home. The car windows would be open most of the time, and summer’s heat would wear you down on the long drive. Yet I stuck with the training because that fall I would rise from 7th man to 2nd man on the team. That’s how it is with things you really want to achieve. Often it is the dedication one shows in the face of other distractions that makes the difference.

Chris In White ShortsBut when I think about that day spent hiding out after the explosion of the fluorescent bulbs in that compactor, it forces me to dwell on the fact that my naivete caused the problem. I wasn’t trying to cause an explosion. Probably there were kids my age smart and snarky enough to do that kind of thing on purpose. But I was never really one of those kids. Instead it  was stupidity that let me blow things sky high.

Explosive evidence redux

Sometimes I think about that event when I read about ‘explosive evidence’ about one politician or another. More typically it is arrogance behind such scandalous behavior, but sometimes it is naivete as well. I’ve come to believe that no one is as smart as they might appear to be on the surface. Even the most successful people in the world have grave flaws that they try to hide. Somewhere along the way they blow things up in life just like I did back in that janitor job.

Sometimes people get caught. Sometimes they don’t. But when folks at any level of society blow things up often enough, the evidence comes back around to haunt them. It’s hard not to leave a trail of some sort when you’re blowing things up on a regular basis. That’s true even when you’re not trying to blow things up but naively seek to deny the explosiveness of whatever it is you are trying put behind you in life.

But then BOOM. It comes back to haunt people sooner or later. Explosive evidence always does, even if it happens in slow motion.

 

 

 

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When have you felt truly happy?

Posted on February 21, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth
PJ and Me

Running in Norfolk with a former high school buddy that past summer was a happy time. 

For those of us that have dealt all our lives with the double drain of anxiety and depression, the thought of being “happy” can seem more like a phenomenon than a true state of mind. Yet there have been many periods of life when I was genuinely happy for long stretches of time, and can honestly say that I’m a fairly happy person now. But it’s a journey, not a destination. There’s always more road ahead.

Recently I got thinking about moments when I was happy to the point of actually living in a satisfied state of mind. And confining the criteria to running and such, my senior year in college cross country was one of those times. So was training in Chicago during the summer of ’84 and setting all my PRs. Returning to training for the fun of it later in life has definitely made me happy. Doing triathlons too. Every event is a new experience, and without the pressure of trying to win all the time, I’m happy to be out there on my own terms.

The Rain King

But when it comes to happiness or the lack of it, I think of the book Henderson The Rain King by Saul Bellow. The lead character goes through most of life with this thought in his head that repeats itself: “I want…I want…I want…” and it never goes away. He’s never satisfied. The book is full of enormous insights on the human condition. Here is one grand quote from the book:

“All human accomplishment has this same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination! It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!”

That leads to trouble when he goes out searching for meaning in life. In the company of a guide, he ventures into the African continent and gets hooked up with a tribe that installs him as chief through an odd mix of appetites and mistakes. Henderson is vexed because it all represents far more than he wanted and a lot that he did not want.

But his ultimate Come-To-Jesus moment arrives when he decides to use his training as a ballistics expert to rid the tribe of the plague of frogs that has taken over their drinking water source. Wanting to be a hero, Henderson lines up the dynamite and tries to blow the frogs to kingdom come. Instead he winds up blowing a hole in that dam that holds the water. He has not only ruined the dam, but endangered the lifestyle of the entire tribe.

The point of the story is that many of us try so hard to find happiness we lose sight of what it really means. But those of us who run and ride and swim have opportunities on a daily basis to let happiness seep into our souls. Sometimes we absorb enough (through osmosis?) that it lasts us all day and all night. And if the happiness adds up it seems like we even earn rollover minutes from one day to the next.

IMG_8997 2

Sue and I so happy to be done with a hard track workout we posed with balloons. 

Exercise is a known antidote to depression. It also helps with anxiety, mostly by giving our heads time to think through problems about which we might otherwise ruminate.

There can also be happiness involved in setting and achieving goals. Even the goals we don’t achieve have a tendency to take us new places or to try new things. Sometimes people progress from one goal to the next overcoming fears along the way. The first-timer at 5K gets hooked on the feeling of fitness and does a 10k. Then comes a half marathon and finally, if people are dumb enough to be that stupid and happy at the same time, they run marathons.

I was never much for the marathon distance. I ran it a few times in practice and raced a few as well. But I found the challenge and rush of racing faster over shorter distances such as 10K much more inviting and smart. For one thing you could race a lot more often rather than pouring all your training into a single race on some weekend twelve weeks out. One of the happiest weekend of my life was built around running a 4:22 mile race on a Friday night and nearly winning a prestigious 15K that Sunday morning. My legs felt so good and my brain was so eager for competition I loved every minute of that running.

Last year I did a bike ride with options of 45, 65 and 100 miles. I separated from Sue at one point because she was doing 114 miles that day. But I made a wrong turn on the course and put in 25 miles that I did not expect to ride. Funny thing about that…I rode is all much faster than the rest of the day, catching groups of cyclists along the way. Sure I was a little pissed and depressed when I realized what I’d done. Yet it got me all the way up to 88 miles when I got back to the finish line. So I rode out a mile and back to hit 90 on the spot.

LUW 1

Riding nearly a hundred miles can really make you happy and satisfied to be done.

The winds had been fierce so I wasn’t chomping at the bit to go the extra 10 miles and do a full century. But the hurt I’d put on myself out on the bike actually felt good. I was proud and happy to have ridden more than I expected that day.

At least I didn’t “blow up” like Henderson putting a hurt on those frogs in the African plains. And when I got back there was no more echoes of “I want, I want…” in my head. My butt was tired and so were my legs. It’s funny how much a little pain and fatigue can make you happy just to be done.

And sometimes that’s all the happiness we need in life.

 

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How do you deal with guilt?

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Christopher Cudworth

Bald Eagles Perched.pngThis morning at 4:45 my wife rose from bed to gather her gear and go swim. She is disciplined about her workouts. And frankly, she loves to swim. That goes back a ways, and she is good in the water. So it’s a joy of sorts for her to swing over to the natatorium before the sun is up and get in 2500 yards or so.

Swimming has not come so easily to me. But I have improved, greatly, from those first days flailing away in the XSport pool with the skinny lanes and warm water common to health club swimming pools. So I enjoy being in the water now, versus dreading every minute out of fear and frustration.

Yet I still haven’t gotten the love thing going for early morning swimming. Perhaps it is the latent association with my early struggles. Like so many people, I’m not a big fan of that first plunge into the pool. That goes way back to when I was a frighteningly skinny kid with zero body fat. Yet I recall I did get up and swim with the instructor and a few other nutty souls in the Polar Bear Club at Band Camp. So I’ve been a glutton for punishment at any age.

Still, I do feel guilty when Sue gets up and leaves for swim without me. I used to attend the Master’s Swim sessions with her weekly. But they cost money and I already pay for a full health club membership including pool rights at the park district facility with the indoor track, weights and fitness room and the yoga sessions we attend weekly. So I think I should swim there. And feel guilty that I don’t do it more often.

Jumping Lark 2.pngPart of the latent guilt I feel right now has to do with the difficulty of going places in the winter months. It’s been a raw winter in some respects. And because it has been tough to run in some conditions, I barely stayed ahead of the fat tsunami this winter.

They say you can’t outrun or outride your appetite, and it’s true. My mouth gets the biggest workout every day unless I put a governor on it. So there’s guilt about what and how I eat as well.

Beyond the workout schedule, guilt lurks around every corner of life. This past weekend we got home at 9:00 from a nice dinner out at Cooper’s Hawk, a wine and dinner club a few towns away. We dined and drank some nice wines on the graces of a gift certificate given to us for our wedding last May. So there was no guilt about the cost of that dinner.

We were happy and actually pushed away the last two glasses of wine and had the server put them back in the bottle to carry home. It wasn’t in our interest to get overserved. Besides, I had to drive.

But when we got home, my daughter and her beau were hanging out in the kitchen and in the mood to talk. They’re living with us as they save up for things and it is wonderful. They asked if we’d like to play some funny board games that night, but we were tired from the day’s workouts and the full meal, so we headed to bed.

And I felt guilty about that. Guilty about other things too, like whether I’ve handled things well over the last few years on a number of fronts. Financial. Social. Family. Cultural. Work. Freelance. Art. Writing. Getting out in nature. Getting fat. Getting getting getting. Getting getting. Guilty.

Guilt is the one consistent thing in all those worries. I do know better. I turn over some of that guilt in prayer. Not for relief of the guilt, necessarily, but for understanding. So what is the source of all that guilt?

Oh, the definition is so harsh:

guilt: the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime.

That is the legalistic definition. There is much more nuance to guilt than hard definition. Sure enough, the secondary definition describes it much better:

guilt: a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong,etc., whether real or imagined.

Mallard Ripples.pngI’m even guilty about how that “i” in the definition above somehow doesn’t link up with the rest of the word. It’s a glitch from having copied it over from dictionary.com to WordPress, that I can’t control. Yet I can’t help feeling guilty about it.

My proofreading of this blog often sucks. I read it through and miss a couple mistakes and publish anyway due to time constraints. Then I see the mistakes and want to kick myself for letting that out there in the world. Part of the reason for those mistakes is the time constraint tension that comes with blogging between all the other expectations and responsibilities of life. So I wind up rushing through the writing and leave no time for the proofing.

I’m guilty of that, for sure. Many times over.

The only defense anyone of us has against guilt is forgiveness. A counselor once told me, “You seem to be good at forgiving others. How are you at forgiving yourself?”

She stunned me. She was right. That area of life needs improvement and constant work. I feel guilty about many things. For example: Not being ready to retire when several of my college friends and former teammates have millions saved up. I feel guilty about little things and big things alike. It all raises the question of guilt in big, bold letters:

HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH GUILT?

The plain answer is, you have to make choices in life. Not all of them are going to turn out the way you’d like. So finding your priorities and working on those is the first step to a healthier attitude.

For some of the guilty factors in your life, we need to write them down on a piece of paper and really consider what we’re doing in our own heads.

Guilt is destructive. It results in repression. It hangs the noose of lost opportunity or squandered resources around your neck. It fuels warped versions of religion and drives already egotistical politicians to an even worse lack of conscience. Guilt is the terror of failure and its lingering outcomes.

As for athletes, guilt may make us get out of bed, but it can’t necessarily make us better. That motivation has to come from a genuine desire to ‘enjoy the process’ because it feels right and good and true to do so. When you are enjoying the process, gratitude for the ability follows. With gratitude comes a deeper enjoyment and a sense of purpose. Then you are able to self-actualize, and not feel guilty for it because your choices are founded in more than surface decisions.

Then, when guilt strikes again, you have a line of defense against feelings that drag you down, make you depressed or dwelling in fear. Guilt comes from confusion over what we want in life.

To prove it, here is the final definition of guilt. It will seem more constructive and helpful now that we’ve been through our little guilt journey:

Guilt: to cause to feel guilty (often followed by out or into): She totally guilted me out, dude. He guilted me into picking up the tab. See also guilt-trip.

That is what we do to ourselves and others when we let guilt lead us where we should not go. Guilt is real, and it can’t be eradicated entirely, and should not be. That is where lack of conscience resides. Not a good place.
As for this moment, I literally have a little kitty sitting in my lap right now. He’s a soft little guy who loves the warmth of a good lap. But sooner or later I need to get up and get ready for work. And to that point, one need not feel guilty about doing so. There will be another writing session soon enough. Another warm lap for the kitty to claim. Guilt does not need to rule the moment.
So being guilty over having to move on in life is not where we need to be. Nor is having to make cold decisions over warm kitties. Give yourself a break, for God’s sake. You don’t have to be guilty about everything. Nor should you be.

 

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