This second of a pair of tardy holiday posts can be summed up in six words: Charlie Brown was right about Christmas. So, for that matter, was Alfred, the young Macy’s janitor in Miracle on 34th Street who told Kris Kringle, “There’s a lot of bad ‘isms’ floatin’ around this world, but one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck, make a buck…don’t care what Christmas stands for, just make a buck, make a buck.”

While my newly Jewish end-of-year traditions have ably taken up where Christmas left off, long before my Jewish journey at times Christmas used to leave me feeling empty. I could never quite grasp why the seasonal joy I always aimed for never felt on the same page with the mass messages about giving and getting swirled around by every stiff December wind. Sure, I was familiar with pop culture screeds on Christmas commercialism like those above. I even knew a few people who loathed the season for exactly such reasons. (A current roommate is one of them.) But I always did my best to ignore yuletide grinchiness and try to feel a sense of wonder about things.

Spending my first December as a non-celebrant cleared up a lot of confusion for me. Although they no longer speak to me in the same way, I have nothing against the traditions with which I was raised or the religious meaning behind them. To my mind, a path to God is a path to God. But standing on the outside looking in, it was very hard to find any religious content whatsoever in any of the nonstop Christmas messaging that the month of December brings.

Good, my secular friends might say. If popular culture doesn’t consider Christmas particularly Christian, then why give up my family tradition of putting up a big, bright (dusty, artificial) tree? Because when you take the religious meaning out of Christmas, you seem to be left with the biggest, brightest holiday…of capitalism.

No longer pulling for my experience of Christmas to feel like 1940s movies tell me it should–and no longer Christian (not that I ever really was)–this time there was nothing inside of me doing its best to interpret secular Christmas as something greater than the sum of its parts. With belief in a baby in a manger taken out of the equation, on the surface there seems like a lot of warm, fuzzy feeling to the season. But try as I might, I found very few examples of allegedly warm, fuzzy feelings that weren’t tied to an ad campaign or sales pitch.

Those pitches all seemed to run like this: if we make you feel cuddly enough inside, won’t you buy our product? And if you don’t buy our product, well just think how bad the baby Jesus will feel. That’s a neat trick. Get consumers to re-assign formerly religious feelings of awe and wonder onto your Lexus or Playstation or Tiffany’s blue box, and once a year you can make a killing.

I found it a pretty disgusting realization, like finally waking up in the Matrix and sliding down the tube into the slime pit. That’s not to detract from Christmas. Christmas isn’t slimy. But commercials and radio ads and going broke to make Wall Street happy–and nearly every commercial interest in America urging you to do so–has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. But, boy, would Madison Avenue like you to think it does. I thought it did for a long time.

In the end, I took my personal feelings of awe and wonder and re-assigned them back onto something religious. Just not Christmas. But if I ever come across someone who actually keeps Christmas from the heart and not from the mall, that’s a holiday table I want to be invited to.

As long as they don’t expect me to bring anything.

This is the first of a pair of tardy post-holiday posts as I reinvigorate this blog for 2011. When last I left off my on Voyage into the Great Jewish Unknown (a.k.a. my Reform Jewish conversion journey), Christmas was approaching. In my daily Jewish observance, I had come to discover a sense of wonder and joy I used to associated with once-a-year Christmas. My mom’s yahrtzeit (death anniversary) was approaching, too. I used to mark her death–and life–at Christmastime. Now, I had the chance to mark her death in a Jewish way.

Last month’s weekend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day fell on Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath. I was happy during the lead-up to the weekend that the cheer that sailed me through Chanukah didn’t abate. I spent the month a happy little almost-Jewish soul, getting a kick out of the happiness of non-Jewish friends around me. (To a point–the second of these two tardy posts is about Yuletide commercialism and my experience of it as a first-time outsider.)

I bought a yahrtzeit light at Jewel (a minhag, or tradition, I found particularly tender), and prepared to spend a quiet Shabbat at home and in temple, where I would recite kaddish, the Jewish mourner’s prayer, with my congregation. At the last minute, my boyfriend, Ryan (who, for the first time, no, you don’t know all about yet), decided not to go to his parents’ house in southern Illinois, and my friend, Nick, let me know he was alone for Christmas Eve.

I was cat-sitting at Overly Frank’s house, and he had put up a tree. So we ended up three people, two Christians and a pre-Jew, lighting candles, doing kiddush (the blessing over wine), and sharing Shabbat dinner by the light of a Christmas tree. Nick would have come to temple too, were it not for the Hero Event. Long story short, a great way to get yourself permanently invited to Shabbat dinner:

• Jump up in the middle of the candle blessing and say, “Mind if I go get my Subway sandwich out of the fridge?”;
• Munch chips through kiddush;
• Eat the bread before the motzi blessing;
• Take off your shoes and socks in someone else’s house and put your naked feet up on their couch–during dinner;
• Decide to take a nap in someone else’s car without permission.

Just. Don’t. Ask.

Anyway, Ryan did come with me to temple Friday night as moral support for kaddish. After the evening I’d already spent, when they very sweet and well-meaning Linda turned around during the service and asked if I was OK, there was no doubt in my mind I was. And would be. Ryan came to synagogue with me the next morning as well (kaddish must be said at temple throughout Shabbat), and on the bus ride back downtown, he said something that blew me away:

“I never knew anything about Judaism, but going to temple feels like all the things I always wanted going to church to feel like. I can’t believe you get to question and argue the way that I saw last night and today.”

Jewish women would pay for non-Jewish boyfriends to say things like that. (He also refuses to start eating unless I’ve said a bracha, or food blessing, first.) He also said one more thing. “That may be the best adult Christmas I’ve ever spent, with you at Shabbat dinner and in temple.”

Oddly enough, me too.

Minus the naked couch feet. No holiday’s worth that.

So last night was my firsty-first first-time ever celebrating the first night of Chanukah. A minor eight-day holiday by Jewish standards, but a major one when you’re the equivalent of a wide-eyed little Jewish six-year-old inside. My friend, Mrs. Welles Park Bulldog, sent me an email on Facebook saying: “A friend once told me how her baby’s eyes danced in the lights of her first Chanuaka. May your eyes dance tonight and for the next eight nights too.” Little did she know some of the light might be coming from the burning carpet.

I celebrated night one with Overly Frank, who donated table space and a quiet house on the condition I bring food. (He wasn’t expecting kosher hors d’oeuvres–yay, Cohen’s!) We began the holiday with Frank screening the Chanukah song from South Park on Netflix. I got him back, though, when I pulled out a two-sheet, Hebrew-English script so that he–and really, I–would better understand the point of the evening.

While the Cohen’s munchies were cooling off, I set up the chanukiyah I bought last month at the Spertus Institute gift shop (yay, Spertus Institue!), and proceeded to light the shamash (the helper candle that lights the others.) That’s when the wooden match with an obvious crack (I should have known better) broke in half as it was being lit, fell to the floor between Frank’s legs, and started to smolder the carpet.

Yes, really.

We both stared at the little Chanukah disaster in the making for a few moments, me being more than usually acutely aware of Adonai’s sense of humor. Then, back to my senses, I thought, smother it, quick! So I did, with the first thing I could think of. The box of the other 249 wooden matches that I was still holding in my left hand.

Yes, really.

Personally, I think it would have worked, if Frank hadn’t butted in and hysterically started to stomp on the box of matches to try and put out the fire underneath. Luckily, there was only a teeny scorch mark on the box, hardly noticeable. (The dime-sized melted area on the carpet is only slightly more apparent.)

When we both stopped laughing, Frank posted about the incident across his entire social-media network, and Chanukah officially began. I told Frank about the background of the Jewish people and this history of the holiday. I recounted how in 165 BCE Judah Maccabee and his forces retook the Second Temple. I told him about the miracle of the oil, how, when they rededicated the temple (Chanukah means “dedication”), they only had one night of ritually pure oil to light the sanctuary menorah, but how it lasted eight nights–enough time to create more ritual oil to keep the menorah illuminated.

I seated the first candle on the right of the chanukiyah, lit the shamash (successfully this time), and began to sing the blessings in Hebrew. Frank followed along in translation:

Blessed are You, oh Lord our God, Sovereign of the universe…who hallows us with mitzvot, commanding us to kindle the Chanukah lights…who performed wonderous deeds for our ancestors in days of old at this season…for giving us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this precious occasion.

I started to cry halfway through, but managed to pull it together enough to take the shamash and light the first candle. Then I sang  my way through Maoz Tzur.

Then I sat there, while Frank continued to roll his eyes about the carpet, and watched the candles burn. I pondered the point of Chanukah, a minor religious holiday based on a questionably accurate element of a historical event. It’s not the “Jewish Christmas.” It has nothing to do with gift-giving except for its nearness to the Christian holiday and the need to keep little Jewish children involved in their own heritage.

I think it has to do with faith in the face of impossible odds–a truly Jewish take on life if ever there was one. Eight nights of light from one-night’s worth of oil. Honor your principles and your integrity above all else. God helps those who help themselves. Don’t be afraid to be your authentic self. It’s all wrapped up in the miracle of the oil for me. I realized this really was the feeling I had missed all along in my many years of celebrating a secular Christmas.

And I resolved to inspect my matchsticks before night two.

Happy Chanukah.

Update 11/30/10: I am absolutely honored that the official Reform Judaism blog has cross-published this blog post today…

I’m getting a bit tired of the inner amazement with which I keep experiencing my Reform Jewish conversion journey. My rabbi recently asked me to do a writing assignment about the hardest aspects to accept about Judaism. I didn’t have much to write about without hedging. The truth is, I keep finding an intense amount of myself in Judaism. The experience is almost as if I’ve always been Jewish, and only now have finally realized it. Intellectually, the journey involves lots of study and deliberation. Emotionally, I’m right there already.

All of which goes out the window a month before Christmas. Close friends have always known to give me a wide berth in the weeks prior to Christmas, specifically when I’m decorating my house. My artificial tree is seven-and-a-half-feet tall, with 85 branches and 2,400 branch tips. For the past 14 Christmases, I’ve strung 200 white lights around the core and another thousand multi-colored lights around the outside. I have a box of ornaments a large family of cats could live in. The whole thing takes 18 hours to put up and decorate, with me complaining through the tedious, marathon event.

And I’m becoming a Jew and Chanukah’s in two weeks. Huh.

I knew a big choice was coming for me. I thought it would be a harder one to make. I thought it would be painful. Really painful. It hasn’t been. Not yet, at least. And that’s been a huge surprise.

I like to say I was raised as a lapsed Catholic. I took religion class in elementary school, but it never really took to me. Even as a young child I never identified with Catholic doctrine. As a result, my annual Yuletide fervor has always been secular. That big, bright tree has always reminded me of the (admittedly too few) happy times of my youth, when my mother, grandmother, and screwy siblings would all call a truce and come together in a sense of joy. Before she died, the last time I saw my mother alive was Christmas Day 1995. Since then, Christmases have also become a second Mother’s Day for me, a time to mark my mother’s life and my love for her. Well, that and to remember the pain of telling her I would be back to visit her the next week…and not doing it.

That’s a lot of pressure for any holiday to live up to. For years, I would look forward to Christmas, enter the season aggressively, demand it cover my yearlong need for checking in with a sense of ephemeral wonder and joy, of awe and gratitude towards God, and of remembrance. It never worked. Come January 1st, I always felt an intense sense of loneliness and disappointment–compounded by the fact that I’d have to wait another 11 months to try and feel spiritually whole again.

In one of my essay answers, I remarked to my rabbi that I don’t feel spiritually homeless anymore. My lifelong sense of lacking wholeness just isn’t there anymore. As Christmas approaches, I’ve been realizing that the sense of wonder, and awe, and gratitude–not to mention a deep, everyday connection with God–are all things I’ve been experiencing on a daily basis, through a new, Jewish lens. My ritual practice (eating kosher, saying blessings over food, keeping Shabbat–the Jewish sabbath, daily prayer, among others) has been like a get-into-the-spirit-free card, one that I can play over and over.

It isn’t as if God has changed. But I have. Or, more clearly, my new Jewish vocabulary has let me get in touch with who I really am–a person of faith with a need to honor that faith more than once a year. I just never had a framework to let that happen. Now I do, and I’m overjoyed to know that.

Even though I may be back in my own apartment before the end of December, I won’t put up a Christmas tree this year. For one, I’d feel like a giant hypocrite if I did. I know my Jewish identity inside and in good conscience, I know I just don’t have another tree in me. That makes me a little sad. But at the same time, I’m astounded that the feeling of Christmas, all the spiritual things I used to associate with it, I already have access to, every day of my increasingly Jewish life. So I can let go of my tree fetish in love. (And I can always visit Christmas in many happy places–the homes of close friends–anyway.)

This week, after much window-shopping–and calling out Target for offering to deliver one by Christmas Eve–I purchased my first chanukiyah, or Chanukah menorah. I quietly said a shehecheyanu to myself as I headed back to the ‘L’ from the Spertus Institute gift shop. (Watch Carol Dane’s loving musical interpretation of the blessing here.) I felt like a six-year-old, looking forward to lighting the candles next Wednesday night (Chanukah starts the evening of December 1st this year), learning how to spin a dreidel, and figuring out how not to burn the living daylights out of myself while frying up latkes.

My major emotional investment this season won’t be in what really amounts to a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar, though. There’s one last piece of Christmas that is about to find a home on my Jewish journey. My mother’s yahrtzeit–the anniversary of her death–arrives in December. For once, I’ll be among the members of my congregation standing and reciting the mourner’s kaddish prayer.

And somewhere, I know an Iberian Christian mother will be smiling.

As I prepare to celebrate my first Chanukah as a Jew-in-training, I’ve been shopping for a chanukiyah. That’s what most non-Jews call menorahs–which they are. Chanukiyahs just happen to have space for nine candles (one candle for each of the eight nights of Chanukah, and one to light the rest.) I would love to buy my first chanukiyah from a Jewish store like Rosenblum’s (now in Skokie) or the Spertus Institute. But they happen to be much cheaper at Target.

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on a Chanukiyah on Target’s website and saw this:

Do you see what I see?

“Select Standard Shipping during checkout for delivery by December 24th.”

Really? Why? So I can use it next Chanukah? Chanukah 2010 begins on December 1st and ends on December 9th, and if a major retailer is going to sell products relevant for a Jewish–or any other religious–holiday, they should be mindful of when those holidays occur.

They should also be mindful of why they occur. Why on earth would it be important to a Jew for their chanukiyah to arrive by Christmas Eve? It would be far more important for Target’s chanukiyahs to arrive by November 30th. And if Target doesn’t know that, they shouldn’t be selling them.

Oy to the world, indeed.

___

UPDATE: The next day (today) I complained about this to Target via email. I said the same things I said above. I received back this tragically comic (and most likely off-shore) reply:

“Dear Michael Doyle,

I’m sorry for the trouble you had with the delivery estimates for the item you’re looking for and I’m not quite sure what’s causing it.

We’d like to help you out. But, we need you to call us first.

Can you give us a call at (800) 591-3869? It would be easier to take care of this over the phone and we’ll help you out in placing the order once we have a better idea of what’s going on.

Thanks for writing. We look forward to speaking with you.

How Did We Do?
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here:
http://www.target.com/rsvp-y?comm_id=ryatdyyx3473552779
If not, click here:
http://www.target.com/rsvp-n?comm_id=ryatdyyx3473552779

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept
incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section
of our Web site.

Sincerely,

Sudeep V.
Online Guest Services
Target.com”

Guess which one I clicked?

Everything in its time. Calamity, sadness, inspiration, healing. The experience of my life in the weeks since I turned 40 was a time long in coming. Nine years ago this past weekend, calamity befell my hometown and in sadness I left it behind. I hadn’t yet begun to see the wreckage I was leaving behind in my own life. Not just nine years ago, but every single day since then.

The anniversary of September 11th is such a potent time for New Yorkers. The hole in the Gotham skyline still hasn’t been healed, and if recent tirades from all sides are any indication, after all this time many of my fellow natives still haven’t found a path to peace about it all. Time and again I’ve rehashed my 9/11 story on this blog, even recording it for national posterity. So I suppose a part of me still lives frozen in time on that day, too.

I recently spoke to my best friend in this lifetime, Peter Morley, after three years of silence on my part. Together we shared the awkward yearnings of our teenage years and the twenty-something headlong rush into real life. But we hadn’t talked since my failed, highly codependent attempt to move back to NYC in 2007. Hearing each other’s voice, it was like a moment had passed. A heartbeat. The blink of an eye. Yet one tinged with the knowing that three years of life had irretrievably happened, too.

Six decades ago, Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, contained all of eternity in one day, if only man would stop and take notice. But slowing down enough to take reasonable notice of the finer points of creation historically has never been the forte of New Yorkers. Least of all this one.

Eight years ago, when I found Chicago, I thought I had left all my problems behind me. Five years ago, when I met a gifted photographer, Devyn, I thought he was the answer to all the same problems that had inexplicably crept back into my life. Three years ago, when Devyn left for New York without me, after I stopped blaming him, I finally had my first inkling that maybe the world wasn’t out to get me. Maybe I was really out to get myself.

Seventy-five years ago, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith founded Alcoholics Anonymous. For the past three years of the recovery journey from codependence that began with Devyn’s departure, I’ve silently comforted myself with the thought that at least I wasn’t a drinker. Having arrived in 12-step in 2007 with a newly minted belief in God (which took me completely by surprise one day), I always figured I had a head start on the steps since I already had a “Higher Power” to rely on.

Taking your recovery journey for granted is a great way not to recover, though. Buddhism, my adopted tradition of the past four years, would suggest we concentrate on this particular moment in time, instead of living with our heads in some fairy-tale tomorrow. It instructs, with good reason, that the only point of personal power is in this moment. But while trying to live in the moment, it’s generally best not to live with your head in the sand, too.

Then again, it can be a good way to bottom out. Last year, my 39th by human reckoning but laughably immeasurable by the standards of infinite time, I stepped up my lifelong practice of trying to defend myself from the ghosts of my past by doing battle with innocent people in my present. From last year to this one, the bridges I burned personally and professionally went up in flames at breakneck speed.

Then last month I turned 40, and a funny thing happened. Everything changed. I can’t say how and I can only attribute the ‘why’ to the power of 12 steps. But one day not long before my birthday I let everything drop to the ground. Deep inside, I finally let it all go. In one moment that seemed to come from nowhere, I realized my responsibility for my own actions.

I began to work my remaining “nuts and bolts” steps, eight and nine–the healing steps. They’re the ones that call you to recognize and amend for your hurtful behaviors perpetrated on those you’ve loved (and lost) and befriended (and enmitized) throughout your life. For three years, I never understood the point of these steps. But very quickly, the value of doing them (and my amends will take a lifetime of doing) became clear. Realizing for the first time in my life that I actually understand and care about the emotional impact of my actions on others introduced to me to a growing humility and–finally–a waning sense of shame about my past.

Even with amends, some friends remain lost, and some hurts can never be fully repaid. But I know in my heart it would be very difficult to become the person again who set such hurt in action. I know I’ve caused a lot of hurt with my blog. How many people have I thrown under the bus over five years in these virtual pages? How often have I blogged at the expense of others? On September 1st, Outsidein interviewed me about my lessons learned as a local blogger. Last week when the interview ran, it served as a mea culpa to my online community:

Ok, folks: what is the #1 lesson Chicago Carless blogger Mike Doyle has learned in his 5+ years of blogging about Chicago, ADHD, blogging, not driving a car, technology and all aspects of his personal life? Hint: it’s not about managing his ADHD, nor is it some tip about how to come up with blogging ideas year in and year out. And it’s certainly not what you’d expect if you’ve ever spent some time reading Doyle’s blog. Give up? Very well. Here’s what Mike wants all you bloggers and wannabe bloggers to know:

“Don’t be a dick! Please, please, please quote me on that.”

And they did. And you know what? I really don’t want to be that blogger any more. In place of the selfish anger and punishing shame, I’d much prefer the sense of humility, other-directedness, and God that I have consistently felt in my life since my heart turned around. I was thinking about this, rolling it over in my mind, during a 30-minute ride on the Brown Line. When I got to my stop I realized it: I wouldn’t be a Buddhist much longer. For four years I’d done a torturous calculus to try and make my belief in God fit into my God-silent Buddhist practice. That practice brought me a sense of my center and a great understanding about the ever-changing nature of the world, but if I was going to maintain my emotional sobriety–if I was going to continue to recover–I knew I needed something more.

Even before Devyn left, even before I came to believe in God, I found myself searching for a religious practice. A fellowship of people with some common belief about life and perhaps about ways to make the world a better place. I knew that fellowship would never be a Christian one. I was raised Roman Catholic and even as a small child knew that I would never be a believer. Christianity has great beauty in it, but it has never spoken to my heart. A lifetime of Eastern spiritual beliefs eventually led me to Buddhism. Now I knew something inside was leading me on.

Last week Rosh Hashanah arrived, a holy time of great importance to many close friends of mine. For the first time, the holiday felt relevant to me, too. The ten “Days of Awe” from the arrival of the new year marked by Rosh Hashanah to the day of atonement of Yom Kippur are the most important on the Jewish calendar. During them, God opens the Book of Life and decides whom to inscribe in it for the next year. Judaism’s highest holy days are all about taking stock, making amends, and embracing life instead of pushing it away.

There are other things I find personally relevant, even touching, about Judaism. A tradition that doesn’t see doubt as sin but, instead, supports the right to wrestle with God and struggle with faith. The experience of the Divine in the mundane. The reliance on study and conscience. The importance of taking care of each other here on earth. The mission of tikkun olam, to “repair the world.” The family-centric holidays and rituals centered on deepening the everyday sense of God.

The covering of the challah before the meal on Shabbat eve so you don’t hurt the bread’s feelings when you bless the wine first. I smiled a long time over that one.

After that Brown Line ride, it took me a day to realize Judaism spoke to everything I have felt my entire life about God and wanted to believe about man’s relationship to his fellow man. It was a realization that felt like coming home to a home I never knew was mine. It took me a month of soul-searching to decide to begin a new and wondrous journey. I have, I hope, half a life left to take it.

Last week, I told my Conservative-raised childhood friend, Barbara, about my interest in converting to Reform Judaism. Although it’s unusual, I told her I’d probably be one of the rare Reform Jews who wants to wear a kippah (the skullcap most non-Jews know by the Yiddish word, yarmulke.) There’s no religious law about wearing them and Reform Jews generally don’t. But the idea is that a kippah on your head reminds you of your conduct, humility, and God.

Barbara suggested I consider getting one and wearing it alone while I study to see how it feels. A Chicago friend lent me one soon after and I wore it in private while studying to see how it felt…

And it felt like me.

Not so long ago, I remember laying down and sobbing for an hour, mourning that I didn’t have a religious tradition to return to in my past. Even so, the idea of choosing one almost overwhelmed me. Just because it feels right in an inexplicable way, makes me feel like I’ve discovered something about myself that has always been there waiting for me to find it, how can I know that I’m making the right decision? A decision that will set into motion months of formal study and a commitment to both a tradition and a people?

I made peace with my decision when I read these words in Daniel Gordis’ famous essay on Jewish spirituality, God Was Not in the Fire:

“There is no one specific faith-claim we have to make in order to start. And it is never too late. All we need is the desire to led Judaism take us on the journey.”

I have that desire.

When the shofar is sounded on Rosh Hashana marking the beginning of the Days of Awe, the third blast is called the Teruah. A staccato series of nine notes serving as an alarm, a warning to move onward with the work at hand. Nine years on from 9/11, I don’t have any more tears. I came to Chicago to try and escape my sense of loss at that awful event. I’ve lived every year since then perpetuating a sense of loss in my life by pushing everyone dear to me away. No more. I’m ready to make peace with my past–all of it–and move on. I consider my decision to do so my own, personal warning shot across the bow of my former blindness about life.

It took me 40 years to get to this point. I’m humbled when I think of the time I’ve wasted. But when I think of the love I feel in this moment coursing through my life from the people I share this planet with past and present, I am awed.

So to old friends who have been there from the start and new friends I’ve met along the way, L’Chaim! To life! This time next year, with help from a power greater than myself, may I have maintained my emotional sobriety for my sake and the sake of our relationships with each other–relationships which I treasure more than I can express. May I recall standing on the outside of my life looking in as a distant memory. And may I learn to love the phrase, “Yes, I was born Jewish, to Roman Catholic parents.”

But next year seems an eternity away. Right now it is enough that in this moment and in my own skin, I know I am finally home.

(Photo: Ten years ago, I thought I had seen it all… Credit: Photos4Travel.com.)

In Buddhist circles, Chogyam Trungpa, the seminal Tibetan Buddhist teacher on American soil, is often said to have remarked, “Nostalgia for samsara is bullshit.” Yearning for the return of bygone glory days in a universe that’s ever-changing is a great way to lose forward momentum. Yet, I can’t help but ponder the first day of the last decade as I resolve myself to go a bit more gently into this one.

The morning after the world didn’t die from the Y2K bug and the official Brooklyn celebration at Grand Army Plaza managed to miss midnight by about 60 seconds, I clearly remember taking a walk up Flatbush Avenue towards downtown Brooklyn. The day was crisp and overcast, but I was filled with wonder that the new millennium had finally arrived. As far as any child of 1970 was concerned, 2000 was a big deal. Every car that passed, every storefront that I passed by, every person who crossed in front of me, I thought, “Wow, that’s what cars, and stores, and people look like in the future!”

I also remember feeling disappointed that, by the look of it, the January 1, 2000 version of the world wasn’t any different from the version I woke up to on December 31, 1999. As January wore on, I began to wonder what I wanted to do with my life in the newly arrived future. As a lifelong New Yorker (at the time, I still considered the city something of a center of the universe), working at my dream job as a nonprofit public-transit advocate, and having traveled everywhere I thought I’d ever want to see, I got a little depressed that I couldn’t figure out what should come next.

I was on the toilet when I decided to visit Paris. Considering how poorly I took to Parisians when I made the trip that April, there’s surely a metaphor in that. In Paris and sulking, my Lusitanian friend, José, began teaching me words in Portuguese. By summer, I had taught myself the rest of Portugal’s language and began the first two of what would eventually be eight weeks spent exploring that country over the next two years.

The job soon changed, too. I loved the nonprofit world, but I needed benefits. The jump to a dispiriting, cut-throat commercial engineering firm helped me gain better perspective about the sector in which I should have remained. Though I doubt I had much of a chance at the new firm to begin with. I never felt like more than an outsider. How could I? It was a shell-shocked office–the company was forced to move uptown from lower Manhattan when part of the the World Trade Center collapsed onto its former building. While I was safely evacuating over the Queensboro Bridge on 9/11, their staff were dodging bodies on West Street.

Besides, they wanted me to learn how to drive.

And, of course, the love affair with New York came to a close when disaster sent me looking for a less angst-ridden urban idyll, which I found here in Chicago in 2003. It’s been a wonderful seven years, too.

I hardly noticed how much I ossified.

Much like that first day of 2000, I began 2010 wondering what on earth I was going to do with my life in a new decade. It was my own fault. I spent most of the preceding one in Chicago creating and settling back into a carefully crafted idea of who I was and what I was here on this planet to do. You think I’d have learned already.

I enter 2010 as a communications consultant ravaged by a lack of nonprofit clients themselves ravaged by the New Depression. As a downtown resident whose entire social life takes place in neighborhoods far beyond downtown, yet who remains in a neighborhood for which he’s paying a premium that can no longer be justified. And as a Buddhist who realizes it’s time to let go already. I made a good go of the work-at-home thing, and have some nice successes to show from it. I did it at the second-worst possible time in our nation’s economic history. Who knew?

And much as I still love downtown Chicago, at this point I remain a resident of the neighborhood mostly out of inertia. I stayed down here after my former long-term partner, Devyn, and I  broke up in 2007–and after my failed attempt to follow him to New York–to prove to myself I was still a Chicagoan. Funny thing, Chicago being my home is a moot point by now. I have nothing left to prove. (And for full disclosure, Devyn and I have long since mended fences as friends.)

So many of us live on autopilot, ensconced in a rigid yet comfortable idea of who and what we are. Some of us manage to at least recognize that, occasionally break out of our stale molds, and then–like me–fall right back into believing seemingly secure, foregone conclusions about ourselves without realizing it. Trungpa’s star student, popular Buddhist author Pema Chodron, points out that life has a habit of trying to pop the bubbles of security we try to wrap ourselves in:

“As a result of that new place, of course, I wanted to nest there, but then the next challenge came along, and the next challenge and the next challenge. And each one pops a bubble. And you become more and more able to groove with bubblelessness. And you can quote me on that.”

Oprah Winfrey’s favorite new-age author, Eckhart Tolle, would spin it more succinctly. He suggests that it’s better to wonder about who you are than to think you already know–because if you already know, then how will you ever be any greater than you already are?

So file me bubbleless for 2010. I no longer want to define myself as the sum of stale assumptions. At least as long as my ADD brain can remember not to. I’m letting some key ideas about myself go that no longer work for me:

• I’m giving up consulting and going back to the rat race–I’m looking for a wonderful new day job. I’ve had enough of shaking the tree. I’d prefer health benefits and a prescription plan. (This does not mean I’m giving up blogging. See: Firewall.)
• I’m planning to say good-bye riddance to Marina City and (here’s the buried lede, folks) to move out of downtown Chicago. I want a real neighborhood back, with mom-and-pop stores and local restaurants that aren’t drowned by tourists every day at dinner, like I had back in Brooklyn. And I want to be closer to my large and loved network of friends, most of whom live on the North Side.

Yes, in a way this means I am throwing in the towel about life in downtown Chicago. I still think it’s the best urban environment between New York and San Francisco and highly livable. I may be back. But priorities change, and at the moment being able to walk to the Art Institute has become less important than being able to walk to visit close friends. Not to mention the cheaper rent that will help me pay my bills better. (See: New Depression.)

In January 2000, I looked for diversions to keep me from facing ideas about myself that were no longer true. This January, it feels a lot more liberating to change the storyline, instead. Out with the old. Looking forward to the new. And I wonder who I’ll turn out to be in this telling.

Happy New Year.