Life’s Meaning and Friendship Connections

We are intensely social beings. This is a predicament because it takes a lot of work to maintain social connections and even the strongest of connections can sometimes fail. It’s worth the work and it’s worth the risks, though, because this social predicament offers us our only chance to live a meaningful life.

Many people who are shy or (like me) introverted might be tempted to think that a meaningful life can be sustained by passively observing the world around us. We might be tempted to think that we can retreat into some sort of safe place, somehow living a meaningful life while watching the crazy, beautiful and (sometimes) dangerous social spectacles crisscrossing our space-time at a distance.

But a meaningful life is only possible when we work hard to forge deep vulnerable personal honest connections with others. Life can be meaningful only to the extent that we bravely reach out to others at the risk of failure and rejection.

Our journey is thus a non-stop crisis. The human condition compels us to keep approaching social intersections of danger and opportunity. There is no place to pull over to be neutral. There is no way to fully light up our potential by vicariously living the adventures of others, including the adventures of sports heroes or Hollywood characters. To the extent that we fail to take personal risks of connection, the meaningful life withers. If we had been given instruction manuals at the moment we were born, this would be Lesson One: Maintaining close personal connections with others is a necessity of life, as important as food, water and air. Chapter Two: A Life without close friendships is an emotionally impoverished life. Lesson Three: We will often fail in our attempts to connect with others and when this happen, it will hurt.

Lesson Four is that we can often get up, dust ourselves off and be better and stronger because of failures to connect with others. This “good” type of failure is only possible, however, if we can ridicule and silence voices that tell us to stop taking risks, whether these are voices of other people trying to “help” us or whether we are broadcasting these pernicious voices inside of our own heads.

I’ve been thinking about these things a lot recently. For the past year, I had been in a period of relatively blissful “normal” life, where everything seemed safe and steady, including an ongoing romance. But then a huge wave hit me from behind and everything was instantly upside down. It’s as if I were at a movie theater where the movie screen caught fire and I started thinking: “This incredible CGI makes it look like there is a real fire,” but then I realized it was a real fire. Then the announcer stated: “We’re taking a break from normal life. Good luck to you.”

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Spontaneous Conversation with Curbside Artist

Martha Ferdinand has been one of my favorite people ever since I began working with her at Arch City Defenders. More recently, we have made a habit of walking briskly through Forest Park while catching up with each other. And, of course, we often contemplate the human condition. We haven’t yet figured that out . . .

Today we took a little side-trip from our planned walk. I spotted a man painting a park scene across the street and suggested to Martha that perhaps it would be fun to go check out his work. Martha nodded, and that’s how we met “Frank James, Curbside Artist.” Frank explained that he has made a living of painting scenes of Tower Grove Park and, more recently, Forest Park. He pulled out other examples of his work from his car: several impressive detailed 30” wide panoramas of park scenes in acrylic paint. Frank offered far more than art today, however. He looked us over and offered an off-the-cuff character analysis of Martha with a big smile and lots of laughs, especially when she agreed that he was somewhat accurate. All of this while smooth music played quietly on his car stereo, but not an entire song. He only liked the first part of that song, so he cut off part where the “irritating” singer began to sing. He loops the pre-vocals beginning of the tune over and over. He explained that this is a significant part of his creative process.



We chatted for awhile about many things, not just painting, but also about his outlook on life, our thoughts on race relations and discussions about music we all enjoy (including Wes Montgomery and George Benson's Breezin’). Good vibes all around.

My friend John Simon often says, “It’s all about relationships.” I agree that this is an excellent default position for understanding almost any life situation. Certainly, my memory of Forest Park on this day will be dominated by the spirited conversations with both Martha and with that ebullient stranger-no-more, “Frank James, Curbside Artist.”

I have a theory too. It seems to me that unplanned spontaneous conversations are often the best, the most memorable. Those who know me well know that it’s hard to hold me back when I get the sense that a quirky

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The Season for Trying to Step off the Treadmill

My 19-year old daughter Charlotte recently commented: "Time seems to go by faster now than it did when I was in high school." Yes, indeed! And it speeds up more and more, especially if you love what you are doing with your life, and if you treasure your family and friends.

This seems to be the perfect time of year to try to step off that ever-accelerating treadmill in order to live in the moment, to appreciate the many things that went extraordinarily well this year but to also appreciate lessons learned where things didn't go as planned. What better way to kick off this season of contemplation than to spend time with your people and to share stories with each other. That's what many of us are doing tonight, of course. To me, that is the magic of the season. My family's tradition is to celebrate Christmas Eve with a feast of tacos and other Mexican food at my house in South St. Louis. My immediate family includes my 87 year old mother, who lives independently, and her five children (I have four wonderful sisters). My mom would proudly add that she has many grandchildren and also some great-grandchildren. But wow, is time ever flying by . . .



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The Catastrophic Story-Telling Failure of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

When they stop celebrating “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” I’ll pause my efforts to reframe this story as having one of the worst endings in the history of story-telling.

Just when the Whos of the Who Village almost learned an extremely important lesson, just when they were having an epiphany that all of that Christmas kitsch and all those baubles actually corrupted the holiday and distracted from the meaning of the celebration, that’s when the Grinch got three times more evil that day.

A proper way to end the story would be for the Grinch to confidently dump all of that glittery tinselly crap into the abyss high above the village. He would then triumphantly ride down into the Who Village to be welcomed as a hero. They would sing odes praising the Grinch for conducting his dramatic intervention. They would deeply embrace the idea that Christmas would proceed in a more pristine and sincere form because the materialistic cravings--those jingtinglers, whohoopers and glumbloopas--had been exorcised from the process. The Whos might even celebrate that the Grinch was channeling the Jesus who drove the money-changers out of the temple. Instead of singing the “Twelve Days or Christmas,” the Whos would compose a new carol called “O Little Town Where Less is More.”

The actual story ending is a sad one, however. Because the Grinch allowed schmaltzy emotion to prevail over principle, he decided that Christmas should NOT become like traditional Thanksgiving (before the concept of Black Friday). He decided that the celebration needed thousands of materialistic distractions after all. The Whos, glitch-addicts that they were, put up no resistance. The story ending consisted of a lesson almost learned. No denouement here—that metaphorical sleigh just couldn’t quite get over the crest of the hill. This kind of almost-story could inspire a remake of “A Christmas Story” where Scrooge almost learned his lesson. In that revised ending, post-nightmare Scrooge would march back to the Cratchit house and spray paint anti-Cratchit graffiti on the walls.

Damn. The story of the Grinch was almost such a great story. See you next year for more of the same.

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