An Invincible Summer

"In the Midst of Winter, I finally found there was within me an invincible summer."
Albert Camus

Today is the first official day of summer. For those who live in Chicago it is a long time coming. I’ve already had a pretty busy summer, I became a reverend (online) and performed a wedding ceremony for one of my old friends, I’ll also be on national TV later this week. These are big things for me…

But life has not always been full of sunshine. I moved to Chicago many years ago thinking I was going to be the next big thing. I remember the first day I moved here. There was an article in the Chicago Tribune called “The Gift of Summer’ it was a good read, but at the time I didn’t think much of it. I was on my way. My life was going to be nothing but summers, and I certainly didn’t need some newspaper columnist reminding me to seize the day.

But Jesus was I wrong… I have failed in every way a person can fail. As a student, comedian, partner, employee, boss, friend, writer, and on and on and on. I have also had some success in this city, but still, I’ve taken some big blows…..I’ve had some moments where I was so low I had no desire to keep going.. That’s the rub of taking risks with your life. When you fall down you wonder what the fuck you were thinking. You cower back to safety, a little more cautious, and a little less willing to let it all hang out….

And yet….It is only by letting it all hang out that we find our path. Joseph Campbell said ‘It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” Having lived long enough to examine some of my own choices and experiences, I know that this is unequivocally true.

Today at a concert I looked around at people with a kind of grateful melancholy. I watched friends laugh together, dance together, and share private jokes over glasses of cold Sangria. I watched them closely and took it all in. I thought about the rewards of friendship. When you have enough experiences together you begin to develop your own language and your own private worlds with a history that it unique just to you.

These unique worlds we build with others, they are the key to happiness, I’m sure of it. We all get a little lost along this journey, but having our own historians to bear witness to our follies is strangely comforting. We all fall on our asses, but having someone there to break the fall makes it bearable. So much laughter is created by being comfortable enough with others to observe our own foolishness through the eyes of someone we can really trust. That’s what occurred to me today. I’m looking forward to creating more of these worlds and to expanding the one I already live in. So yes, I have found my invincible summer and it has very little to do with the weather. It has to do with other people. So at the official beginning of this Chicago Summer I vow to broaden my life a bit more. There are worlds waiting to be born, if I just have the courage to find them.