Football Nirvana

The cool, seemingly ethereal air surrounds me.  The trees and wildlife still in their last throes of summer, lush and full of color.  The sun still beaming brightly as a reminder of just how brilliant life can be.

I'm out running, listening to a the song "Scrub" by Mike Fiki.  A song that both exudes confidence while still being cognizant of a struggle.  I'm feeling good, my lungs and feet in rhythm.  I'm trying to push myself, while keeping aware of what my body feels like. 


I finish running into my driveway, gasping for air and quickly taking a seat on my porch.

I'm looking up into the blue and white sky over the tops of the dense green trees.  I'm looking and feeling at a place that feels near perfection to me. 

"This, this is what I've been waiting for,"  I think to myself, looking as I watch a slow fading sunset in the distance.

It's a Friday and for the first time since the fall of 2005, I am free for football weekends.

For the first time, I feel as though I'm joining the rest of the working world and so many of my peers.

Over the past 13 or so years, I have enjoyed working in the service industry as a bartender and  manager, yet the demands of the job entail a lot of weekend work, especially during events such as home football games.

After that amount of time, you kind of forget how great weekends really are. Consecutive days away from school or work and the freedom to do whatever other activities you might enjoy.  The ability to plan and meet friends or family becomes more manageable.

To have that again feels serene.

For the first time since my freshman year, I will be able to attend almost every game in one season at Penn State. 

The sense of anticipation continues to grow, verging on a sense of near hysteria.  The optimism and energy in town feels like a pathogen bursting into our bodies and giving way to an abnormal upbeat mood swing. 

Most pundits have pegged Penn State to be the third big ten team behind Ohio State and Michigan, but I think the truth is that no one really knows.  It feels with Urban Meyer leaving Ohio State, as well as its starting quarterback, they could be had.  Michigan feels like it should be better by now since they paid Jim Harbaugh a ton of money and have had some great recruiting classes.

The reality is I think we just defaulted into thinking the teams will be where they almost always are without any real consideration as to who actually may have the best team on the field.

So to me, this season will be fun, because I think of it as a season of opportunity.  That this year could be something special as the team comes of age.  All the reports seem to indicate they have some really great players all over the field and that the athletic talent at Penn State overall is about as good as it's ever been.

I think the things that will separate them from the other teams will come down to the intangibles. 

The ability to read and understand the game as it unfolds. 

The ability to deal with adversity. 

The camaraderie, trust, and love it takes to help each other through a demanding physical and mental season.

The ability to push one another to be better.

Now for the first time in a long time, I feel more a part of that again.  It feels like a long lost connection to my past has come back to me.  A welling of nostalgia and peace seems to be putting me under a spell where the world appears without flaws.

For me that is what I feel going into tomorrow.

Football Nirvana.

Lessons From The Past.

I didn't exist during World War II.  I didn't exist during the Civil War.  Not for Vietnam or Korea.  I didn't live through the 60's and and 70's during the Civil Rights Movement or the Great Depression from 1929 to 1939. 

I live in the world of today, and what I see today has, for the first time, made me feel as though America, and maybe the world at large, is approaching a crossroads again. 

We stand in a time where the world is getting significantly warmer, there are large migrations occurring due to the corruption of governments and war.  Our ability to trust one another seems incredibly fractured, especially at the highest levels. 

I want to take the lessons of years past, and try to figure out how to come out on the other side and bring about the changes in the world that lead to peace, that lead to an improved and better world.

In those times, there was typically a leader that preached unity and passion for humanity that helped defeat those that championed greed and exploitation  While every leader in the history of civilization had faults, it is those that led with compassion for people, that acted more often in kindness than in selfishness, that are looked back upon with the most reverence.

It saddens me on a regular basis that people want to go back to ideas popularized by segregationists, by fascists, by xenophobes and racists.  It is those ideologies that I thought America has evolved to leave behind in order to help create a system where we attempt to treat all people equally.  America, in my view, has been under near constant improvement over the past two centuries.

America has never reached its ideal.  From its inception it wasn't even close to the values that are framed in the constitution.  Land would become stolen.  People from various minority groups would be treated as sub-human.  Soldiers were lied to and sent to die and kill for reasons of greed and pride. It has taken the country over 200 years to become even close to the dream that is talked about so often. 

Yet we have made strides.  Long overdue corrections were made as slavery finally became abolished, women and minorities became able to vote; that those that identify as gay to be able to become married and have the same rights as anyone else. 

It is not perfect, and prejudices and wrongs remain to be sure, but we are still improving.

We cannot give ourselves moral leniency now, and we must move forward in a way that cares about all people, and not just those that we might associate with. 

In my opinion, there are powerful people who inflame every difference and disagreement in an effort to control and shape things.  That instead of talking about the things that unite us, certain leaders continue to try and divide us, trying to use sarcasm and hate to incite outrage and emotional volatility. 

Most of the country wants universal healthcare taken care of by their tax dollars.

Most of the country wants universal background checks on guns.

Most of the country wants marijuana to be treated and regulated like alcohol.

Most of the country feels that a person's sexuality or gender should have no bearing on how they're treated or their access to employment or education.

Most of the country believes security in the voting system needs to be improved and that, in general, our elections and system needs to be far more transparent.

If we are to move forward and get better in this society and in this age, then we must take the lessons of the past and apply them. 

We move forward based on the things that unify us, the things that make us ALL human and not on the things that divide.