Ramblings of a Retired Mind

  Ramblings of a Retired Mind An Ethical Will A message of love, values, and legacy In our faith, there is a tradition known as an Ethical Will — a letter of the heart, written not to distribute possessions, but to pass on values, lessons, love, and blessings to those we leave behind. In recent years, I have spent time reflecting on my own life and on the lives of my children and grandchildren. Those reflections brought me back to a short letter my father left for me to find after his passing. That letter was brief, but it was powerful. My father wanted me to know how proud he was of the man I had become. He wanted me to know that although he was gone, he hoped that, in some way, he would still be watching over his grandchildren and over my wife and me. He wrote about the lessons he had learned in his life and about the importance of living with honesty, truth, and loyalty to the ideals of our faith. The letter was written after the passing of my mother, his wife of forty-eigh...

  Ramblings of a Retired Mind Time Where has the time gone? How did it get this late already? Where did the day go? Time, as the saying goes, waits for no one. Theories That Hurt My Head There are, broadly speaking, three theories of time: realist, relational, and idealist . The realist view holds that time is a physical thing— time is relative , tied to space, just as Einstein described. The idea that time slows as speed increases is fascinating, but also enough to give me a migraine, so let’s not linger there too long. The relational view suggests that time depends on the sequence of physical events in the universe. In an empty universe, time wouldn’t exist at all. Where the realist says the universe has a clock, the relationalist says the universe is a clock. Thinking about who—or what—started that clock brings on a dull ache along the top and sides of my head, so it’s probably best to move on. That leaves the idealist view, which claims time is a construct of the...

Ramblings of a Retired Mind Say it Enough  Yesterday, we witnessed yet another American tragedy of our own making. A mother. A daughter. A friend. Renee Good lost her life during a confrontation with federal ICE agents. Almost immediately, the federal administration moved to define the event on its own terms—casting the victim as the villain and shaping a narrative that aligned neatly with its worldview. We have seen this before. History Has a Way of Repeating Itself On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University, four student protesters—Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Schroeder—were shot and killed when twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting the war in Southeast Asia. Sixty-seven rounds were fired in thirteen seconds. Nine others were wounded but survived—an often-forgotten fact. Though eight guardsmen were charged with violating civil rights, all were acquitted. The Nixon administration quickly blamed the student...

                                             Ramblings of a Retired Mind                                            Death Among Us   Living With Death, Choosing Life Nothing stirs emotion quite like death. It is the one certainty we all share, yet it arrives without a timetable or warning. We never know when it will come—only that it will. We encounter death constantly. Sometimes it touches our lives directly; other times it reaches us through news headlines and distant tragedies. We witness loss involving strangers and people we love, and the difference between those two experiences is profound. The Distance of Public Tragedy Recent weeks have been filled with reminders of how fragile life can be. Acts of violence driven by hatred, live...

  Ramblings of a Retired Mind Our First Christmas Tree When I married a fallen Catholic, I quickly learned that Christmas comes with a rulebook—one that is invisible, ironclad, and absolutely nonnegotiable. My wife’s family is wonderfully complicated and just scattered enough to make every holiday an exercise in logistics. She has four sisters and one brother, and every single one of them had their own Christmas traditions. Separate celebrations. Separate locations. No exceptions. So when her brother announced he’d be bringing his family up from South Carolina to spend Christmas in Chicago, my wife made what seemed like a perfectly reasonable suggestion: “Could we all celebrate together, just this once?” The answer was swift and unanimous. No. Since her brother and his family would be staying with us, I figured they deserved a proper Christmas—tree, lights, the whole deal. The problem was simple: we had never had a Christmas tree. Ever. “Well,” I said, “let’s get one. We’l...

  Ramblings of a Retired Mind Can I Change? The question hit me today: Can I really change? A simple inquiry, yet somehow endlessly complicated. I’ve always believed that part of our purpose in life is to keep learning, seek new experiences, and grow. But for all its importance, change is hard—much harder than I like to admit. Some days it feels as though I’m living in a permanent state of self-renovation. This drive toward self-improvement shows up everywhere. There are the shifts I know I need to make, and the personal adjustments I owe my wife. Then there are the subtle behavioral tweaks—the ones that affect friendships and everyday interactions. The feedback I receive is rarely cushioned: “Bob, you’re talking too much.” “Stop interrupting me!” Statements delivered with the sting of inconvenient accuracy. Still, I’m willing to put in the work. I’ve changed before, even when I fought it at first. For years, I terrified passengers with my driving, brushing off their ...