Weekend Reflections

So, here are my thoughts from the weekend.

 

Activity recap: Jen and I stayed in Friday night. She was kind enough to take me to Panera in the morning so I could get internet access for my fantasy football draft. So, we had breakfast, she read and I did what I needed to do. Pretty relaxing morning. We went into town during the afternoon, walked around a whole bunch. Didn’t ultimately find what we wanted, but that’s ok. We went to a cool Chinese place called the Smiling Buddha for dinner. Sunday we went to a USA vs. China women’s soccer game. Found out while we were there that this counted for the US towards Olympic qualifying in 2008. That was pretty fun. I left from there to come back to Cinci.

 

 

Here’s what I contemplated on the way home.

 

I know that Jen and I are supposed to be together. I know this in many different ways, two of which I realized this weekend in particular. In no real order:

 

1)       I play a completely different role in this relationship than I ever have in any previous relationships. It’s much more of an equal footing than I’ve ever experienced.

2)       Even the worst day we’ve had so far between us was still a good experience overall. We argued, then sat down and talked about it calmly and cleared everything right up about 15 minutes later. Things were strained for an hour or two, but we stayed with each other, and by the time we got home, everything was just fine. And all of our arguments have been this way.

 

 

Chicago is fun to visit, but I can’t deal with it for very long. Although I have no issues getting around (hell, I caught a few shortcuts for us by simply paying attention to what was around, even though I’ve never been there), there are simply too many people. Everything feels crowded and rushed. Everyone is running around a million miles an hour. People are rude, thoughtless, and worse yet, some of them are downright mean.

 

It’s absolutely amazing what one person can notice if you try. I was struck by this riding the El, walking around the “residential” areas of Chicago.

 

Acts of senseless negativity, downright hostility, wicked ignorance as people pass by events.

 

Acts of kindness, unique perspectives, completely different world views.

 

And these things change block to block, neighborhood by neighborhood. The buildings are the same, but some blocks have newer, brighter paint jobs. Some have burned out signs. Some have signs over remnants of older signs. And invariably on every block it seemed like one business was closing or closed and another was opening. Some blocks the empty spaces outweighed the full, and some blocks that was opposite. The closer you got to the city proper the fewer open spaces there were.

 

I must have heard 20 different languages. And yet from a distance, you couldn’t tell what they were speaking, but you could understand basically what the conversation was, from restocking shelves, unloading trucks, people have lunch conversations, etc. I really didn’t feel like language was much of a barrier all day when looked at from the proper perspective.

 

 

I won’t claim some deep understanding of life after one day walking around one of heavier population centers of our country. I won’t claim to have it all figured out now.

 

However, I will say that it was an experience that was very enlightening in many ways. Although I did not get to get into it as much as I would have liked, I felt like I was operating on a higher level again. There was so much to absorb, and I was really trying to get the most out of it.

 

I’ll post some more thoughts in the next few days. There is really a jumble floating around in my head, and I haven’t sorted it all out yet.