I woke up this morning with Steve Winwood in my head. There are worse things, I could wake up with Muskrat Love playing in my noggin.
Mine was “Can’t Find My Way Home,” written by Winwood and recorded by Blind Faith back in 1969. I hadn't heard it recently. It was simply there when I woke up.
Somebody holds the key.
Apparently somebody had been screwing around with the locks while I was sleeping. Because I had dreams all night that I could not quite remember, followed by this strange feeling when I woke up that I was somehow adrift.
Which makes absolutely no sense.
I am sixty years old and living on the top floor of a three-flat in the Divorced Dad District. I have a roof over my head. I have a good job and a trading desk where I intend to finish my career. I have three kids I love. I have friends and family who care about me. I know where my coffee pot is. I know where my church is. I know where Comiskey Park is and I know several establishments within fifteen miles capable of producing a decent Italian beef or Gyros.
By almost every reasonable definition, I know exactly where home is and yet this morning I couldn't find my way there.
Maybe that is what happens at sixty. You stop wondering where you are going and start wondering where the hell you are right now.
Not geographically, or spiritually or emotionally. Somewhere down inside where Google Maps is absolutely no fucking help.
Maybe I'm looking for peace. Maybe I'm looking for a stronger connection to God. Maybe I need to spend more time listening and less time talking. Maybe I'm supposed to dig around inside myself and find some spiritual balance that I have neglected while spending forty years worrying about corn prices, utility bills, kids, politics, divorces, careers and whether the White Sox have enough bullpen arms.
Maybe there is still one piece missing from the puzzle. The piece that makes you look at the whole picture and finally say: Oh. So THAT IS what all of this was about.
I do not know and that is okay.
Because I also don't believe I am supposed to spend Saturday sitting cross-legged on the living-room floor trying to locate my inner soul.
My knees hurt and God knows where to find me.
I am not wasting the day trying to solve myself and I'm certainly not waiting around to find my way home.
I am going to a rugby match where there will be thirty enormous human beings beating the shit out of one another over an oddly shaped ball.
There will be a scrum, a ruck, a maul, and there will be cold beer and camaraderie.
.. And afterward, if God is willing, there will be a Chicago hot dog dragged through the garden with no mustard.
Maybe that is the answer. Maybe peace isn't some magnificent moment when every piece of my life suddenly falls perfectly into place. Maybe sometimes peace is simply recognizing that I already have enough of the pieces.
A safe place to sleep. Work that is not a job. Kids who worry me. People who give a damn whether I wake up tomorrow. I have Faith and a Saturday afternoon watching rugby and grabbing a hot dog.
Steve Winwood can keep looking for his way home, I know where mine is.
