Sorrow carves into your being isn't what you want to hear on a Sunday Funday when the menu is put together, football fans are gathering and the home team Bears are playing a team from California. A modern day version of the Smiths versus the Grabowskis.
Back to Khalil Gibran for a second and then we can go back to Abe Gibron.
Sorrow shouldn't be a wound that continuously hurts and heals and hurts and heals throughout life. Sorrow should be more like a sculptor that takes loss, disappointment, grief and failure and uses it to reshape us into something stronger.
People who haven’t suffered often experience joy shallowly...
...quick heights, quick fades.
But sorrow digs space inside you. It makes the inner vessel larger. When joy comes later, it has somewhere to land. I think that is why people who have felt real pain often laugh the hardest, love more passionately, appreciate the quieter moments and feel gratitude on ordinary days.
Gibran isn’t saying sorrow leads to joy, but that they are linked. Our same heart feels both sorrow and joy deeply. If you become numb to sorrow, then you limit yourself to the joy in life. Avoiding pain limits how alive we must be.
The things that break you don’t just hurt you, but they make you capable of Mo'...
...Mo' joy, Mo' love and Mo' meaning.
Take a day like today. I put an eighteen down for the high this afternoon, but the wind is going to make it feel minus eighteen. On a day like today with the cold biting wind, the quote works because it doesn't bullshit.
Winter doesn’t apologize and people who have lived through enough winters understand that endurance itself becomes a kind of quiet strength. Cold days make us enjoy the warm days mo' betta and sorrow makes joy ignite our soul.
Enough with the Lebanese philosopher, Khalil Gibran and back to the robust football coach Abe Gibron.
Today is seven-layer dips, roasted beef, spicy chili. A case of Old Style on the back deck staying cold without the help of Coleman cooler. Shots of Sambuca in the garage with the uncles and the cousins. Smoking cigars and arguing over Payton not scoring in Twenty.
It is Grampa who can remember the Bears' last championship in 1963 and their Superbowl in 1986. Grampa can also remember Coach Gibron singing Three Dog Night on the sideline as the Bears get pummeled by the Redskins.
Stay warm today. Pace yourself with the guacamole and don't forget to Bear Down!
