Midlife Meditation

Just another play. I'll start with a confession: if a football game is playing on a television in any room I'm in, I can't keep my eyes off it. It doesn't matter if I'm eating, drinking, shooting pool, having a conversation, trying to write a blog post: whatever I'm doing, I'll find my eyes straying every chance they get to the screen where large athletic bodies are crashing into each other as one set of them tries to move a ball down the field while the other tries to block that action. I have no fan skin in any of these games I watch: I know the names of only a handful of players, care little or nothing which team is winning, and have no idea until a few days before the Super Bowl who's going to be in it. And yet, the drama of this violent game grabs my attention every time. I thrill at successful passes, at dodged tackles and blocks, at interceptions that turn into touchdown runs; and I groan at hits that seem far too solid for any human bo...

When I work out, I greatly prefer the work to be literally out. Outside, that is. Running and hiking, my favorite sweaty indulgences, cry out for fresh air, even when the weather is wet and windy. I may come home drenched, but I'm always more vibrantly alive, and I know I've accomplished something. I've gone somewhere. That matters. Unfortunately, at 53, my feet can no longer handle daily pavement pounding, so for the last two years, I've added a bicycle to my exercise regimen, and here I have to admit to being a fair-weather exerciser. It's not that I can't ride in the rain, and if the temperature's not too low, I frequently do. When it's also windy and dark, though, I begin to worry about whether the other vehicles on the road--those weighing tons, rather than the few pounds of my bike--can see me, or avoid me. On days like those we've been having lately, I take my workout indoors to a spin class at 24 Hour Fitness; and if there's no class t...

Good God, make it stop! And why can't I tear my eyes away? Football scares me. I've written about this before, and I encourage you to peruse that post (as well as this one , which suggests the human tendency to turn even safety equipment into weapons if it will create an advantage in a competition is what occasioned the Flood). The elegant game of baseball aside, football really is America's sport. No other sport merges bone-crushing violence with arcane bureaucratic rule manipulation as elegantly and telegenically as American football. These two components--violence and creative rule avoidance--are the most American of vices. The US tax code is as voluminous as it is because every Congressional addition to it, whether its purpose is to plug a loophole or streamline a provision, provokes an equal and opposite reaction from tax accountants and the capitalists who hire them to find even more convoluted ways to shelter their income from the IRS. Lest you think...