American Bridge

American Bridge is falling down. The rungs are shoddy and rotting and its tenuous hold to the bank is being broken away fiber by fiber with each negative shot fired from one side to the other. Once it falls, all that will be left is a deep crevice of resentment creating an insurmountable separation that will make compromise impossible.

Every four years, our nation's only large-scale political discussion becomes a sad display of gotchas, one-liners, told ya so's, smearing and scare tactics. We choose a side early on and then turn a closed mind to nothing but what we want to see and hear as we tear the opponent down as loudly as we can. From yard signs and bumper stickers to Facebook posts and emails, negativity rules as everyone becomes an expert and opinion becomes indisputable fact. We all become spin doctors twisting and mutilating words and statistics into whatever we please. Context? What's that?

Both sides know what's best for our country and that the other side is full of disconnected morons with nothing but their own selfish interests in mind. We label each other and create an image of the other side. We paint each other as villains. "Republican" and "Democrat" take on a life of their own as examples of everything that is wrong with our country, so much so that the words themselves conjure up a predetermined idea of a person's entire personality. We are no longer citizens of these United States. We are red or blue. We are callous or lazy. We are simply right or simply wrong.

We need this middle ground we're destroying. But instead, the side that wins will see no wrong and the side that loses will see no right. There will be resentment among the losing side and they will spend the next four years reveling in, if not hoping for, the failures of the "winner". They will actually be happy when something goes wrong and our country is worse for it. They will have "I told you so" at the tip of their tongues, ready at all times to feel the sweet satisfaction of their utterance.

If we want to save our precious middle ground, we must make a decision to get more satisfaction in finding compromise than in finding fault. The cheap jabs and mockery must be put aside and we must at least attempt to work together before the bridge falls once and for all, leaving us staring from opposite banks as what's best for our country is crumbling into the vast ridge we have created between us.

Here We Are...

Doing circles around a star. Clothing hiding the animal beneath it. Longing for the affection of others. Focusing our lives on the opportunity to propagate the species. Going through the motions without asking questions. Unsure of our purpose. Living because we do. Distracting ourselves with our day-to-day lives. Waking up and going to sleep with not much in between. Working to feed ourselves. Desiring arbitrary status symbols. No inherent value in anything...

Except relationships. They are the real meaning of life. The greatest people aren't those with power and control, they are those who make the lives around them better. And that takes no money or prestige. It takes caring and interest. It takes selfless decisions.

That's the purpose. To make every decision and action with diligent care. To know that our time is short. To know that we have the power to make or break a person's day. A smile. A concern. Or simply to listen.

When all the false motivations and superficiality is stripped away, we are simply animals sharing a confined space, being driven by unseen instinctual forces and doing what we do because that's all we know to do.

We exist on a small rock. We are small. We are insignificant to it all. But, we are significant to each other. We mean the world to each other.

But, that world is at odds with itself. People kill each other. We battle. Maybe it's because at the core we are all the same. We're the same animal. The same desires, the same wants and needs. And like any animal we do what's in our power to ensure we get those things.

However, unlike other animals, we can decide. We can decide that sometimes getting what we want isn't worth the consequences to others.

But, of course, we're selfish. We have to be. We can't give of ourselves to the point of having nothing left. Even more so, we have the absolute right to personal happiness. But there's a line. A line that too often gets crossed. When our own selfish desire devours the good of all. That's when things go bad.

And, more often than not, that's how things are. We aspire to fit a mold. We want. We covet. We won't stop until we get it. We have perverse goals. We want things that make others jealous. We want to proclaim our superiority with material possessions. Possessions that are fleeting, meaningless, and pointless.

More than what we achieved, our real mark on the Earth should be with those whose lives we have touched. Those lives that were a little brighter because of us. People hurt. People cry. Nobody can do it alone. We need each other more than things. That should be the central focus.

It's tough, though. We're all preoccupied with ourselves. We're all stuck in our own heads. We're self-centered. When we hurt, no one else matters. When we hurt we want someone to be there for us.

But, too often we run. We don't want to deal with it. We take each other for granted when that's all we really have.

Magic Breakfast Land

Every time I see that McDonald's commercial where the little girl asks her parents where breakfast comes from, I always think that it'd be funny if they told the truth rather than come up with some "Magic Breakfast Land."

So...

"Where does breakfast come from?"

"Well, honey, it all starts with the birth of a cute little piglet. You know, like the one in Charlotte's Web? Eventually, after spending most of its life in a cramped feed lot, they send the fattened-up little piggy to a processing plant. That's where the magic occurs. First, they send its soul to piggy heaven. Then they gut it, slice it up into pieces, and turn into the sausage you're eating right now.

Oh, sweetie, don't cry. The pig's life was miserable. You're doing him a favor by eating him. He was probably counting down the days until he could put a smile on the face of a happy McDonald's customer. The moment they ran that blade across his neck was the first time he'd been happy since the day he was born. Plus, if God didn't want us to eat pigs, he wouldn't have made them taste so good.

And do you remember that time we went to the petting zoo and you saw those cute little baby chicks? Remember how you wanted to take one home so bad and we wouldn't let you? Well, the egg in your breakfast could have become one if you hadn't eaten it. So, in a way, you get to take one home now.

But, the bad news is that if you really cared about chickens you'd have ordered a chicken sandwich rather than the egg. At least then the mother hen would have felt the sweet kiss of death rather than being kept barely alive, standing around in its own filth and longing for the day that its egg production goes down enough to make it no longer worth keeping around.

Oh no, no, honey. You're not a terrible person. Chickens are actually really dumb. They have no idea what's going on. I gave them feelings they probably don't have. I was just having fun. Pigs, on the other hand, they're pretty smart. Though, I guess they're not quite smart enough or I wouldn't have just finished my second sausage biscuit.

So, to answer your question, breakfast comes from dead animals and unborn baby chickens...aren't you gonna finish that sausage?"

Reggie The King

For context, I wrote this after finding out Ray Allen had broken Reggie's all-time 3-pointers made record:

After staring blankly in a state of shock, I've finally been able to come to grips with it. Or, begin to. It's been rough so far. The weight of this new reality pressing down on me. It's almost too much effort to lift my head. The thought is still unreal. I can just stare at the ground and shake my head...

The joy. The triumph. The heartbreak. The amazement. He gave it all. Defying all odds and silencing thousands. Bowing to the crowd as boos cascaded down from every direction. Soaking it all in. Reveling in the hatred for him.

He knows they only hate him for what he's done. With a callous heart he's broken theirs. Time and time again. Enjoying it more each time.

He turned dreams into nightmares...

His foil was his greatest inspiration. To watch him suffer brought him joy. To stare him in the face and watch the gloom wash over it. To see his heart broken. That's why he did it. That's why he loved it...

Reggie Miller. The king. The record may not be his, but the title remains. The timing and the pressure. The killer instinct. The shear brutality of his cold-blooded shots. His three-pointers raining down like bombs bringing destruction to an entire city's dreams. The net exploding with each swish. The crowd erupting in agonizing moans and then falling silent. That's what fed him. And he was hungry...

More than just three points, his shots meant the elation of one city and the utter depression of another. His threes squashed hope. His threes brought opponents to their knees, head in hands, all hope lost. His threes made people either love him or hate him. But, most of all, his threes made us watch with bated breath.

And for some of us, they made him a hero. A hero who took a small town team and thrust them into the national spotlight by taking on the mighty Knicks. He brought down Goliath with his own form of that famous weapon. His arms his sling and the ball his rock. From long range he struck again and again with a fury unseen. Until the giant had fallen...

Raise your arms in triumph, Reggie...For you are still the king.