Summary: Contrary to what you might think, this post is actually not about big hair, glory days, fashion disasters of the ’80s, or whatever the male equivalent of a cameltoe is called. This post is about faith. And, whether they know it or not, Journey helped lead me back to mine. This story takes place on an ordinary day in Chicago. As I recall, it was summer because people were outdoors in short sleeves and weren’t ducking for cover when the wind kicked up. It’s not a slam on the windy city to say there only seems to be two seasons in Chi-town—winter (8.25 months) and summer (3.5 months). I’ll allow a couple of weeks for that in-between time that some might generously call Spring. It was late afternoon and I was cruising my neighborhood for a parking space when I spotted a most miserable woman. By all appearances, she seemed okay in the way most mildly disillusioned city women at the outskirts of their prime do: they bear up and hunker down against big city rigors without as much as a backward glance, silently resigned to pay their toll for living where they did. The woman’s eyes were blank and her feet barely lifted off of the ground as she trudged heavy up the avenue against the midday sun. I say ‘up’ because, even though the street was flat, to my eye, she was trapped in an upright struggle to keep herself going. I get some of my best insights and motivation from food, and if I had to reach for an edible analogy right now, I’d say the woman was the fallen bittersweet middle of a soufflé left too long to cool. The American grandfather of gourmet cooking, James Beard, once said the only thing that will make a soufflé fall is if it knows you are afraid of it. Make no mistake: living in fear of living will cause your life to sag, droop, and collapse just like that woman who, by the way, could be—and is—every one of us. If you knew me at all, you’d know I’m a chronic optimist. I’m the one with a generally upbeat take on life, which I’ve been told can be annoying, and even when I feel shitty, I’m simply a natural at finding laughter in virtually any situation. I’m better at it—or should that be worse?—than a pig hunting truffles. Mind you, I’m no willfully blind Pollyanna who resists bad news, personal upsets, and life’s inevitable disappointments of up bad timing. It’s just that one thing I know is how to navigate my way to the bright side of the street. Here’s another thing I know: we're a whole lot more than the meat jackets we walk around in. Like Sting says, We ah spi-rits in the ma-ter-ial wooorld. And yet. Witnessing that woman dragging her burdens up the sunlit street like she had no inner anchor or place to call home, no place to truly be, stayed with me. She never saw me seeing her, but those few seconds I spent taking her in impacted me in the days and, consequently, years that followed. I couldn’t shake the heaviness of her. More to the point, what I couldn’t shake was the idea that maybe she was on to something. What if all my happy anecdotes and optimistic observations in the face of 'reality' were just platitudes void of substance, fuller with hot air and sweetness than any soufflé? Had that woman identified me as the soufflé—puffed up and so delicate that I’d topple at the thought of an unlovely gust? I wondered. And what if my worldview was just a bunch sugary, regurgitated hand-me-down armchair drivel that just didn’t matter to anyone else but me? What if that woman really was on to the secret of life that had somehow escaped me in all of my happy aspirations? These are the thoughts that turned me inside out for the rest of the day—and night. The next morning I awoke feeling sluggish and grim. Even while showering, I was still stuck on the experience, not wanting to believe succumbing to misery and world-weariness was the inevitable conclusion for us all. Because if it was, well, let's don't go there. Just like I get lots of motivation from food,
