The Bear has cast a spell on me. I watch it in a transfixed state rooting for the restaurant and every single character. I’m doing my best to limit myself to one episode a day before dozing off. I slipped up today and watched Episode 4.9 in the middle of the day. Whether to watch the season finale tonight is one of the great ethical questions of our time.
Episode 4.9 produced not just the normal watery eyes, but actual tears thanks to Jamie Lee Curtis who they should just give whatever awards she’s eligible for. Tour de force.
I see critical headlines about the show’s lack of direction and slippage and just laugh. “Not reading that or that or that.” Because the writers are all wrong. Every season, hell, every episode is perfect.
Criticize the show and prepare to throw down.
Then there’s Haim’s new album, “I Quit”. Haim is single-handedly giving young hetero males hope. Their songs and vids are unabashedly hetero. And fun. And funny. Dig this lyric from “Take Me Back”.
“Alana lost her head when she had a crush Billy St. Reams didn’t wanna fuck Bad GPA, couldn’t get it up”
I don’t know BSR, but there’s no way he deserved that!
Here’s a different track from the album.
Extra credit if you know which one of the three love interests is on The Bear.
A very good friend of mine has been “unlucky” in marriage. Three divorces. Although the first was so short, and he was so young, he doesn’t count it. A mulligan if you will. So, for all intents and purposes, twice divorced.
Of course, you and I both know luck has nothing to do with whether committed relationships endure.
After his last divorce, about five years ago, he looked in the failed relationship mirror, and really didn’t like what he saw, negative patterns of his own doing.
In no time at all, he fell hard for partner four. So hard, he turned to a therapist to avoid sabotaging it.
No dude in the history of dudes has ever told another dude everything they talk about with their therapist. But my friend has confided in me a bit about his therapeutic journey including his initial question of “Am I an asshole?” I could have saved him a lot of time and money by simply saying “No, you aren’t an asshole. Not even close.” But his initial question was his way of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” Which lead to, “What work do I need to do to avoid fucking up this relationship?”
Relationship Four really warms my heart. I asked him what explains his positivity and joy in this new relationship and without hesitating, he said, “We have fun together.” I herby submit that as a litmus test for any committed relationship.
I don’t know anyone over fifty who has pivoted as much as my friend. The key ingredients as I understand them—introspection, humility, vulnerability, and self-compassion. Inspiring stuff.
Fast forward to a text he sent this morning. And I quote, “And then to top the evening off, I showed M how I had spent the last five weeks secretly learning to swing dance to surprise her for her 50th birthday. Yes, that’s as much as I can manage after five weeks. I can’t dance! And I’m a slow learner.”
The low res video nearly brought me to tears. Just the two of them, swing dancing in front of a big ass swing band in a New York City club. It’s so beautiful. Because it represents so much damn growth. He’s prioritizing her happiness. And so the happiness comes back to him.
On my run this afternoon, I kept returning to the vid in my mind. And all the innumerable podcasts I’ve listened to and “think pieces” I’ve read that lament the problem of boys, and how to raise men, and how to teach masculinity.
My friend’s surprise swing dance is the most manly, most masculine thing imaginable. Because it’s the result of all the intrapersonal work he’s done.
I firmly believe the “boy-man-masculinity” discussion is completely pointless. Instead of asking, “What does it mean to be a man?”, we should ask, “What does it mean to be a decent human being?” Instead of obsessing about getting masculinity just right, we should shift our focus to the personal attributes we want all young people to embody, irrespective of their gender identities.
Especially how to be caring, kind, and selfless. I am incredibly proud of my friend for piecing together an equation that fosters those exact attributes.
“Elon Musk’s net worth dropped by $26 billion today, primarily due to a significant decline in Tesla’s stock price following a heated exchange between Musk and Donald Trump.”
Being described by libs as the “big beautiful break up”. Abby Phillip on CNN just said $34b. So give or take $8b.
My writing about my family’s experience with Lynn’s Multiple Systems Atrophy has resonated with a lot of people here and on our CaringBridge site.
A recurring theme is they appreciate the “honesty”. And how I sometimes use humor to lighten things. And many of my readers, like me, are also “on the back nine” and so final chapters are more relevant than if I had a younger, hipper readership.
Honestly though, the “honesty” feedback perplexes me because I feel like I’ve only been able to paint about 15% of the picture. There’s way more that I’m leaving out than I am including.
But maybe, everything really is relative, and people are used to even far less transparency?
Of course, it’s impossible to perfectly quantify how much someone lets their readers in. Just know, when you listen, read, or watch anyone’s story, there’s always way, way more to it. Always.
Why aren’t you and I more forthright with others? More vulnerable? More honest especially about what’s most difficult. And about our related, negative emotions?
As a male, I have the excuse of not having been encouraged to communicate my emotions growing up. But I’m sure that’s true for boatloads of women too. And so that’s a lousy explanation that really doesn’t get at my reticence to be more honest.
Another explanation that I’ve touched on previously is not knowing how to be more honest without compromising others’ privacy. Hell, the picture I included with the last post, I got in trouble for it. Because it was a “tender moment”. Which is exactly why it was such a good picture. So there’s that. Lynn didn’t want me to share her tenderness with you. So what’s a writer to do?
Maybe, if I outlive her, and the odds in Vegas are that I will, I’ll be freed up to paint far more of the picture. Even 16-17%.
A year ago or so, when my wife’s Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) really started to take a toll on her and us, one of her close friends pulled me aside and said, “You’ve run a lot of marathons. This is going to be another one.”
It’s an apt metaphor until it isn’t. Apt in the sense that caring for my wife is daunting and it requires real endurance. And ultimately, it’s exhausting.
But when running marathons, there are markers every kilometer or mile that help you carve the total distance up into more manageable parts. “Okay, now I’m half done.” Or “Okay, now I just have to gut out a measly 10k.”
With MSA there are no markers unless you count steadily worsening mobility, steadily losing one’s voice, or steadily losing. . . pick the system. Despite my wife’s steady decline, I don’t know how to pace my caregiving, so cliché alert, it’s literally one day at a time.
Two aspects of it are especially hard.
The first is the utter selflessness required. A traditional marathon is almost entirely physical. It mostly boils down to whether you’ve put in the miles or not. In contrast, this caregiving marathon is entirely spiritual. Very simply put, the question is whether I can let go of all of my personal hopes and dreams to meet my wife’s immediate needs. All day. Every day. Over and over. And over.
I want to waste some time watching bad television, go away for the weekend, and sleep through the night uninterrupted, but I can’t do any of those things. Or much at all because there isn’t time.
We’re fortunate in that we’ve hired some help, which means I can squeeze in runs, rides, and swims, and thereby flush some of the stress. But some inevitably accumulates.
Recently, I approached a crosswalk in our nearby traffic circle at the start of a run. Not seeing me and thinking she would just roll into the circle, a driver approached the crosswalk way, way too fast and nearly clipped me. I straight-armed her bonnet and lost my shit. So much so she looked scared and immediately turned apologetic. For those scorekeeping at home, my anger was worser than her speeding. “Who have I become?” I wondered.
Which leads to the second challenge. Instead of mustering some semblance of self-compassion, which I’ve become convinced is probably the key to a good life, I continually beat myself up, concluding I’m not nearly up to the spiritual demands of providing the patient, selfless, and kind care my wife would undoubtedly provide me if the situation was reversed.
So, instead of saying to myself, “Ron, you’re doing the best you can to be as selfless as possible in very difficult circumstances.” I find myself thinking. “Because I lack the requisite spiritual depth, I’m doing a shit job caring for my wife.” Those are not constructive thoughts. But, they are mine.
Two years ago, I started creating annual playlists labeled by the year. Whenever I like a new song, I just slide it in.
2025 is shaping up to be a banger list led by young women. If there’s a prude bone in your bod, neither of the first two tracks are for you. Is “E” for “explicit” or “excellent”?
Anyone out there? Anyone? Yes, still alive. Do note however, that I did not go so far as to say, “Alive and well.”
But there’s enough negativity in the air without me adding to it, so today I’m all unicorns and rainbows.
I just wrapped my semester of teaching first year writing and a course titled “Multicultural Perspectives in Classrooms”.
I’ve only told the inner circle, of which you are now a part, that it might have been my last rodeo.
So let’s fast forward to Grace, a first year writer, and the last day. Grace is a black belt in tae kwon do. In her paper on social infrastructure, she wrote beautifully about her tae kwon do studio where she grew up and now teaches.
There are two types of students, those genuinely seeking an education and those simply wanting certification. The later sacrifice curiosity for figuring out “what the teacher wants”. Other “tells” are how they tune out their classmates and focus intensely on grades. Not their fault I have to remind myself. Our factory model of education tends to socialize students to prioritize product over process, but I digress.
Grace was all education from the beginning. Her eyes locked on mine from the jump. Near the end of the last class, an informal day of peer editing small groups, she asked, “Do you have any more advice for us?” I thought that was sweet, since I understood her to be saying she didn’t want our time together to end.
Flashback. December 1993. Guilford College. Greensboro, NC. The end of my first college course, a small senior seminar. I waxed philosophic for probably ten minutes using as many ginormous words as I could muster. Reminding my students of all they had been blessed to learn under my tutelage.
At the very end of the sermon, a hand. “Ah,” I thought, “Josh is going to thank me for changing his life.”
“Dude! You have a pierced ear!” Josh’s observation inspired his classmates to chime in on why the hell I had never worn it to class. Things quickly spiraled down. In the end, no one thanked me for the sermon or for changing their lives.
Back to Grace. Still haunted by Josh, in response to her question I said, “No, not really.” The look of disappointment inspired me to add, “Well, just keep doing exactly what you are and you will flourish.” Weak, I know.
An hour later, I was making a quiet get-a-way. As I entered my car and looked across the parking lot to see if I could pull out, there was Coleton, Hudson, and Lily walking side-by-side in my direction. All three of my first year writers smiled at the surprise interaction. I lowered my window and asked whether Coleton, wearing short sleeves in December, ever gets cold, and we made some more small talk. I had no idea they were friends outside of class, a class whose theme was “The Art and Science of Human Connection”. Obviously, they had connected. “My work here is done,” I thought to myself.
During that final week, after recycling a quarter century of paperwork, I texted the Good Wife, “My take-away. I’ve done a lot of good work. For a long time.”
Then Makida, a talented young writer from Ethiopia, wrote me. “I wanted to let you know how grateful I am for the incredible impact you’ve had on my first semester. It’s been almost six years since I had a teacher who made me love learning as much as you have; my 7th-grade chemistry teacher was the last, and he has always been a special figure in my life. You remind me of him in the best way, with your encouragement, kindness, and ability to bring out the best in your students.”
And Jordan. “Thank you for providing a space of enlightenment and discomfort for my brain this semester. I feel as if I had the ability to grow a lot.”
And Emma. “I’ve had a hard time putting my appreciation for you and your class into written words. This was my last semester at PLU, and I feel so grateful to have had a chance to learn from you before my undergraduate journey came to an end. I typically struggle in humanities classes because I’m not a very talkative student; but something about the way that you structured your course made it easy for me to participate and engage. You have an accepting and approachable energy that makes your students feel comfortable having brave conversations in class. . . . I’ve taken a lot of difficult classes at PLU, but none of them challenged me in the ways that this course did. I came into this semester thinking I knew a lot about education from my mom, but I never realized just how much there was to learn. You said on the first day of class that the skills we would learn in EDUC205 would be useful in many different careers and areas of our lives. While I still don’t know if I’ll ever teach, I know that I’ll use the lessons I learned in your class to make an impact on the world in some way. I think that regardless of their vocation, everyone should take a class like this. The multicultural introspection and reflection that I experienced was more valuable to my career as a physician than any biology course I’ve taken in my time at PLU.”
These messages made me want a do-over with Grace, but it was too late. In hindsight, my advice to her and her classmates would have been to pursue work that does more than provide economic security. Find work that enables you to make a positive difference in others’ lives. Work that enables you to express your values. Work that is mutually rewarding. Do that, and you won’t consider it work.
Pressing Pause 