The Futility of Relitigating the Past: Embracing Forward Momentum

The goal is to build upon past foundations, not to dwell within them.

Michigan Avenue. Saturday morning. A father and his, perhaps ten year old, son pulling a pair of suitcases on wheels, marveling at the buildings and general size of Chicago. They stop for a moment at an odd segment of an ancient mosaic embedded in the concrete sidewalk. The kid, with his Spiderman backpack, is fascinated.

They are approached by a, maybe twenty year old, man with all the air of an opportunist looking to get a few bucks from a couple of tourists.

“Gimme five dollars so can get something to eat.” It isn’t a request, nor a demand. It is simple a statement of desire or need.

“I’m sorry. I can’t. We’re on a pretty tight budget.”

“I got NO budget, man. Gimme five bucks.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Yes, you can! Look at you. Three bucks?”

“Please. Please just leave us alone.” The man is positioning himself between the panhandler and his son. He is getting visibly uncomfortable.

“You don’t gotta be racist about it!”

The words hit the father out of the blue. “Wha…? Racist? I’m NOT a racist!”

“Four hundred years! Four hundred years! You OWE me reparations! FIVE DOLLARS, PLEASE!”

————

Hours later. The same stretch of street. An older couple strolling through the semi-substantial press of bodies rushing past them. A young man doing the transgender thing or cross dressing thing—it’s hard to tell as he is wearing a dress but has a thick brown beard—accidentally bumps into the man. As if the slight and momentary crash was a catalyst for everything he feels is wrong with the world, the old man barks out.

“In MY day—

Oh no. He didn’t just say that, right?

“In MY day men didn’t wear dresses! Watch where you’re going, Alice!”

… Alice?

People part away from him as he stops and starts a full on rant about things in his day. His companion (wife?) seems embarrassed but stands quietly as he loses his cool. He spews out a short list of the way things were when he was younger and how it has all gone to hell. It was better back then; it was civilized.

————

I’m watching Paul Giamatti in the Black Mirror episode Eulogy about a wounded older man who, in a fit of humiliation and frustration, blotted and cut out the face of a love that blow up in his face and now faces her death. His trip through what was and what might of been is familiar. I wonder through the tears what might have been had I never married HER. If I could go back in time and CHANGE my decisions.