Layman's Terms

My girlfriend Tegan's twin sister Amanda recently called me and asked, "What are retained earnings?" She was working on her company's financials and had stumbled upon a term that she had heard of before but did not fully understand and now had to use intelligently at work. For me, the definition of a company's retained earnings is about as rudimentary as you can get. But for her, with no business background, my text-book definition lead to even more questions. What she wanted was an explantion in terms that she could understand. What she didn't want, nor had time for, was an entire lesson on the intricacies of a company's financial statements.

This is the reason why the concept of specialization exists. Amanda speaks fluent French and works at the French chamber of commerce. Makes sense. My understanding of the French language does not extend beyond a Nintendo video game console (a Wii, get it?), but that's fine because I work in finance. Something as common to me as retained earnings could look like a forein language to someone else.

So, I thought I'd take the time to explain some other very common things (to me anway) in simple terms. Hopefully, we'll all be on the same page.

iPad: An extremely expensive toy that gives a false sense of coolness and will be obsolete in 5 minutes.

Cell Phone: A device that digitizes one's voice, allowing users to talk to each other over vast distances and slam into each other on the highway.

Glenn Beck: The most scared man in the world.

Internet: A horizontally structured, digital network that gives users access to unlimited information, efficient markets, and social connections but is mostly used for stalking and pornography.

NFL: Roman Gladiators 2.0

Politics: The art of lying, cheating, bickering, backstabbing, posturing, playing dumb, making false promises, and forgetting everything one has ever said, all in the name of patriotism.

Collateralized Mortgage Obligation: Thousands of pieces of shit bundled and wrapped in a really, really expensive and confusing bow

Cheesy Gordita Crunch: A blend of tortilla, cheese, meat filler, sour cream, lettuce, and tomato that has a utility inversely related to sobriety.

Airplane: A vehicle that uses thrust and lift to transport people and spread colds.

Fox News Comments Section: The area below an article that allows angry, sad, stupid, and lazy people to add back to society.

Pâté: Cat food.

Marriage: When two young adults fall in love and decide to spend the next 15-20 years with each other.

Charlie Sheen: My hero.

Greetings

What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do?

These are the three main questions we ask when we meet someone. I use these questions all the time, and I'm expecting it in return when I meet someone new. During the course of a casual first meeting, if a stranger skips these very basic steps, I almost feel like a social contract has been breached. I feel robbed of my meet-and-greet protocol. It is an actual comfort to have these questions in my pocket. For whenever I am confronted with a new face, whether it's because our mutual friends' attention have drifted away from us, we are filling the void while waiting on the bartender, or we simply met eyes on the el train, I know I have at the very least a good 10 minutes of conversation before I have to actually think of something to talk about with this person. And who knows, maybe I'm from the same area, which adds at least another 15 minutes.

It was my junior year while attending the University of Wisconsin - Madison. I was on the swim team there and we had just finished our final day at the Big Ten Championships. It is tradition to have a team dinner where all the families get together after the long weekend. The festivity usually transpires in some banquet hall at the hotel we are staying, which this year happened to be a beautiful place in Indianapolis called Holiday Inn. The coaches say a few words, we have a buffet meal, we chat, and all the guys, regardless of performance, can't wait to get out of there and just goof off with all this exhausted energy, just pining to get home and start the real celebrations.

The main purpose of the meal though is the getting together. The chatting. The meeting. The recounting of the weekend. We as social beings find comfort in eating as a large group, especially after a time period of stressful circumstances. Holidays, graduation, a death in the family, or in this case a competition. I don't really know why. Maybe it has something to do with the resulting feast after the exhilarating big hunt.

The parents usually know each other after spending so much time up in the stands watching us compete, but not always. My mom, my dad, and my friend Mikey, a senior, and his parents were sitting at a table donned with a paper tablecloth. We had just sat down to our meal of gourmet pasta and garlic bread upon a plastic plate. The father of one of the freshman on the team came over to our table and wanted to introduce himself. He had met Mikey's parents and wanted to make sure to meet mine, as I was a co-captain with Mikey and he wanted to meet the other captain's parents.

Now what transpired was absolutely nothing more than ordinary. To be honest, I don't remember exactly what was said, but I'm pretty sure everyone involved followed standard procedure. Afterwards, the man smiled, as did my parents, and we got back to our garlic bread. But then my dad said something that for some odd little reason has stuck with me. He looked at me and matter of factly said, "I wish, just for once, someone would ask not 'what do you do' or 'where are you from,' but 'who ARE you?'" Then he turned back to chatting with my mom. To him, it was a fleeting thought; to me, it has changed how I think about strangers.

Upon thinking about his gripe further, I realized that my father had a point. All too often we use these questions as a crutch, giving a facade that we really care about the person to which we are speaking. Don't get me wrong, there are times when I really am interested in what a new acquaintance is telling me when we first meet, and not just when it is a cute girl at the bar. But a lot of times it is simply filler. I feign interest in my new "friend" because I know our short time together will pass and, chances are, I will never see him again. I am polite, and I am rewarded in kind. But, really, what a waste of time for the sake of mere pleasantness; and why do anything in life if it is not genuine?

After constant usage, these three little questions, instead of simply describing certain aspects of who we are, actually start defining who we are, which, in reality, is utterly shallow. Why should my place of birth, in which I had no choice, define my personality? Why should the name my parents gave me, again in which I had no choice, define my character? Why should the job I took as a means to make money doing something I enjoy necessarily define my essence? As I respond to these simple inquiries repeatedly to stranger after stranger, I pigeonhole the definition of me in my redundant answers. My father was making sense.

However, before I was completely convinced he was right, I asked myself two follow up questions: If someone really did come up to me and asked, "who ARE you?" would I know how to truthfully respond? And, even if I could, would I want to share my innermost thoughts about myself with a total stranger? The simple answer to both these questions is a resounding "no."

We all, despite my sounding like Shrek with his onion analogy, have many layers to our personality, our character, our being. Each successive layer represents another boundary to whom we let inside. I have countless "friends" or acquaintances on my outmost layer; these are the passerbys with whom I make eye contact on the city's sidewalks as I make my trek home. The next layer would be the people I have met and, at the very least, discussed my name, my job, and my geographic origin. From there, the layers continue, with each stratum of my multi-dimensional character inhabited by fewer and fewer souls. Assuming I actually knew what to say, if I allowed a stranger to cut through all those layers and inform him of my true self when he asked me who I really am, it would rob my closest, innermost friends the value of our relationship that took many years, laughs, tears, and stories to create. Simply, it wouldn't be fair. And I, in turn, would feel cheated if it was that easy to get close to my best friends.

So, I would have to say that I am OK with these three questions when meeting someone new. As the old Chinese proverb says, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Any relationship has to start somewhere, and these questions, despite being hackneyed and shallow, at least provide building blocks and common ground from which to grow. And considering that you and I are just starting to get to know each other, I thought it would be appropriate to begin with the casual and fully established meet-and-greet.

Hi. My name is Tom, though most of my friends call me Tommy. I live in Chicago but was born in Barrington, IL. I work as a Senior Investment Analyst at Prudential Capital Group.

Nice to meet you.

New Beginnings...

This was written February 2009...

==========================

I am a nobody. I have had no great accomplishments, lead no great movements, fought no great war. My life is no more significant than a single blade of grass across the entire Great Plaines. My voice is no louder than a pin drop in a noisy city. My life will pass over this world with no greater effect than that of a single warm breath against a arctic glacier. But chances are, I'm not much different than you.

As a human being, I go on through my daily life, a slave to routine, as if order and repetition provide my existence even a slice of meaning. I fret over the smallest occurrences. I am ecstatic with the most minute fortunes. I value my life by the progress of my career path, the joy of my social relationships, and the peace found within. I do this while trying to ignore the enormity and endlessness of forever, as it has become impossible to grasp. I focus on the minute details that make up my world because I am haunted by the vastness of eternity.

It is very easy to think of men and women who we believe have left their mark on history. Looking back, some great names instantly come to mind. Alexander the Great, still recognized as one of the greatest military leaders ever to have trampled this earth. Ghenghis Kahn, the fearless and ruthless leader of the Mongol Empire, to this day the largest contiguous empire in history. Julius Ceasar, Queen Elizabeth, George Washington. But legacies are not left only to great crusaders and leaders. Think of the greatest minds: Plato, Homer, da Vinci, Shakespeare, Curie, Einstein. Think of the greatest artists: Picasso, Dali, van Gogh, Monet. To keep it simple, think of some of the great names of our day: Jordan, Woods, Phelps, Nicholson, Hilary, Obama. These are only a few examples of people much bigger and greater than I.

For me, it is near impossible to think of these names and not feel my worth at the very least mitigated. Who am I compared to these people? What accomplishments have I done that could even be mentioned in the same breath as those of this very select group? Are they not human beings just as I am? Then why do I feel that, in the end, they will live on forever, and I will simply end up another forgotten soul?

It was impossible to answer these questions until the sheath over eternity, the veil covering forever was lifted. I had always felt that their legacy would go on to the end of time because of their impact on history, on thought, on politics, on sport, on life. Their story would be recounted, their theories studied, their works enjoyed, their names remembered forever. And this seemed like a reasonable assumption, for Alexander the Great ruled over 2,000 years ago and we still readily consider his name synonymous with the word conquerer. But will he still be remembered another 2,000 years from now? 100,000? A million years? A billion years? A trillion?

I realized that every person on this earth leaves a legacy. We all have an impact, and the question is not if or how big but simply how long. In reality, any pursuit to leave a permanent mark on this world is an effort in futility. Forever is bigger than all of us and greater than any individual. But due to our ability to learn history and imagine the future, we do not exist solely and linearly between our birthdate and the day we die. History lessons mesh into memory. Dreams mold into reality. We fool ourselves into thinking that we have been around since the beginning of time and will live forever, so we try to create a legacy or impact that will match that span of time. But it's simply not possible.

Eternity, endlessness, infinity. The concept of forever is impossible to truly fathom. Some people call it God. Some people call it Truth. But whatever one calls it, the reality of timelessness renders who we are and what we do insignificant. We can all agree that our lives are a defined slice of time, and mathematically, our fraction of infinity approaches zero. Our lives approach nothing.

Is this a grim conclusion? I don't think so. The weight of legacy and worldly impact have been lifted and a lightness remains. If my life is meaningless then my misfortunes and trials and mishaps are rendered meaningless as well. If my time on earth is definite against an indefinite backdrop, then the joy and happiness and fulfillment I reap from it are all that matters. For just because something is meaningless does not mean it is not real. My relationships are real. My bliss is real. My love is real. While my hate, my sadness, and my despair are also real, their meaningless allows me to let them go. My lightness of being allows me to choose what I hold on to, and therefore endless choice is the greatest gift of a life rendered meaningless by endless time.

I recently told a close friend that I made the choice to write a book. He instantly dismissed it. Someone in his mid-20's should not be spending his time looking back, dissecting what has happened, as autobiographies often do. Looking back is for those whose clock is reaching its time, for those whose harboring sandy shores are not too far off in the horizon. But this will be no autobiography, I explained to him. No doubt, there will be stories of moments and times that I believe have shaped me into the, I hope, unique human being I am today. But it will be less backward looking and more inward and more forward. I imagine myself reading the thoughtful, youthful, and lofty words within these pages when I am withered and approaching that harbor, wondering if I lived up to their promise.

There are times when I have felt very alone in this world, mostly during the few times in my life of heartbreak, loss, and suffering. There is no one on earth that could possibly understand what I am going through, I would feel. But it is times like that during which I am reminded that "every heart vibrates to that iron string." It is our shared universal humanity that brings us together. It is why comedians can make us laugh, why movies can touch our hearts, why books can touch our soul. It is our shared meaninglessness that forces us to give meaning to each other.

So, as I embark on this journey of using written word to portray my own muddled thought, I promise to be as real and as true to myself. As in all of life, I have no specific plan in mind. But I do hope to perhaps strike that iron string within myself and within anyone willing to listen. I am a nobody and this is my story.

=================================

I wrote this on Facebook's Notes one random evening in the dead of winter when inspiration flashed through my mind and I had a couple hours to follow through on it. I posted the essay and received immediate positive feed back from friends and had every intention of following through with its promise: to write a bibliographical and philosophical book based on past experiences and future dreams. In retrospect, perhaps that endeavor promised too much.

I don't mean to say that writing a book was something I couldn't handle in my lifetime. But this original post had a weight to it that was too heavy to bear. Even if I had an idea to write about, my drafted words did not match what this "Preface" gave preview to, and I would close the computer and divert my attention elsewhere. I began to feel guilty that I had the gall and presumption to post such a heavy handed piece and gave up on the project altogether.

I've realized, however, that I didn't overshoot, I was simply aiming in the wrong direction. I still believe the words I wrote in February 2009, but their focus on deep, introverted reasoning pigeonholed me. I don't always think or write in such emphatic terms. Sometimes I can be very light hearted. Or comical. Or somber. Or weird for the sake of weird. Or simply hungry. In life, our range of emotions and perspective can change drastically. From year to year or even day to day.

So that is what this blog will aim to achieve. My goal will still be to strike that "iron string" within me and all of us, but I'm going to keep an open mind about how to do that. Sometimes I will attempt to cut right to the core of it and sometimes I'll skirt around the issue and sometimes I'll just write because it's fun and I enjoy writing. Maybe, just maybe, you'll enjoy it too.