​Dear Rory,
 
I am tremendously pleased with your victory last week at the Masters Golf Tournament, making you only the sixth person in history to win all four major men’s golf tourneys (which include the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship, along with the Masters). It was a scintillating four days, IMO, and perhaps the most draining and competitive major championship I have watched in my life. Checking my faulty memory banks, I’m highly confident I recorded and watched (fast forwarding through much of the “inaction”) close to 100 percent of the golfing.
 
Back to you. You were an all-time great before you completed this “career grand slam.” You would have remained a career all-time great without winning the Masters. I get it. You wanted it. It dangled in front of you, tantalizing your emotions. The announcers and media pounded on you year after year about how you needed it to secure your status with those five other golfers – Jack Nicklaus, Gene Sarazen, Tiger Woods, Gary Player and Ben Hogan.  Your greatness didn’t need that win.

Yes, you’ve now checked an elite box. You stand with those five other guys until someone else comes along and becomes the seventh. Scottie Scheffler will likely tap on the door in the next five years and ask to enter that room.
 
That’s won’t make Scottie an all-time great. Instead, like you, it will be because over a long period of time he wins, competes, finishes annually at or near the top of the PGA tour. The media and many people are obsessed with winning, which only one person does in golf on any given week, competing against 119+ entrants on average. That means when you win on any given week, you are better than the top one percent (.83 percent to be exact) of the VERY BEST GOLFERS IN THE WORLD.
That statistic means that in your 29 career wins, you’ve finished ahead of 99.17 percent of competing golfers. You’re great. That’s great.
 
Let’s get back to those people who pigeonhole greatness, wanting to define it for you, putting that pressure on. What they have to say doesn’t matter. They’re talking heads. They’re not out on the course week after week, battling weather conditions, all those spectacular competitors, sore bodies, lapses in concentration, unlucky breaks. Each golfer on the PGA Tour, in contrast, does.
 
Things don’t always go your way. Every golfer knows that. It’s a great lesson for everyone who plays golf. I imagine most thinking people who pick up the clubs recognize this. There are bad days, bad weeks, years. Life intervenes. An argument with your spouse or the death or birth of a loved one changes your perspective and how you approach the game. It affects your swing. It affects you much you enjoy the nature of the game, which should typically involve relaxation and elements of a Zen perspective on the world – oneness with the shots you make.
 
Before winning the Masters, Rory, you’d already conquered four other majors (winning the PGA twice). That’s pretty darn great. You’ve won the FedEx Cup three times (the reasonably new end-of-the-year three-round tournament to crown the best player for the year on the PGA Tour). The only other player to win even two FedEx Cups is Tiger Woods. That’s great company. You are at the top of that list.
 
Don’t let the pundits and media define you, Rory. Define yourself. It’s clear, given your reactions after pulling off your stunning victory last week, that you placed a gigantic burden on yourself and wanted the Masters incredibly badly. I get it. You deserve it.
 
I’ve rooted for you for the 18 years you’ve been on the PGA Tour. I will continue to root for you regardless of whether you win another major. IMHO, you have been the greatest golfer on the Tour for the last 15 years. Others have had a run at you, and yeah, Scottie is crushing it these past three years. But, your body of work, which defines GREATNESS, is the best if you look cumulatively the past 15 years. That’s a ton of victories. And many, many other top ten finishes. That’s greatness, Rory. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
 
FORE!

​Ideas for this column arise in multiple ways. One is from friends who email me something that gets me thinking, laughing, philosophizing, wondering. When one of those emotions is charged, I save the email and let it percolate.
 
Sometimes the percolation lasts for weeks, sometimes months, and occasionally for years. The phrase “annihilating city crowding” was the topic of one of those emails I pulled from my pile, and ironically it was dated almost exactly to today’s date two years ago. A bit of serendipity.
 
The genesis of the email thread had to do with “issues that destroy our society.” The word “destroy” is a bit strong. The theme was more about what is a big issue that causes major problems for our society in the United States.
 
My writing friend posited two as quoted here: “The two big issues that destroy our society are boredom in rural areas and overcrowding in cities.” Let that percolate a bit.
 
There’s a lot that goes into both of those issues – causes, intensity levels depending on where you live exactly, the size of a metro (what is too big?) or rural (when is it too small?) area, homogeneity of the community, the growth or contraction that the community has experienced in the past 10-30 years, and more. We’re stereotyping here in forming judgments generically about these two types of communities.
 
Anyway, my friend wrote the solution in the email, a bit simplistic, as follows: “Destroy small town boredom; annihilate city crowding.” There you have it. Slap your hands, dust them off, and the problem(s) are solved. Or that is just a small start toward problem solving.
 
As most thinking people recognize, nothing is that simple. But there is a huge truth in the two points from my friend.
 
They are this: In rural communities, there is a greater need for services, jobs, businesses necessary for life’s basic necessities. Those towns could lack access to a hospital or internet service. Population loss could mean closing schools and students having to be bussed 30-100 miles to consolidate with the closest high school. The only supermarket might have closed. And, so on.
 
In cities, on the other hand, stress, traffic congestion, rising prices of housing are but three of the major outcomes due to consolidating too many people in a give square mile. We are not meant to live in those types of crowded conditions, and it often leads to sewage, air pollution, electrical grid capacity and garbage taxing systems not designed to absorb higher populations. Services can’t keep up.
 
There were a couple simple planks to my writer friend’s presidential platform that we elaborated in the email. On destroying small town boredom: “Install a movie theater with rotating venues of old movies, comedy clubs, concerts in towns with populations 1,000-10,000.”
 
On annihilating city crowding: “Mandate bike/hike paths with greenery to wind through any new or redeveloped parcel of land in communities with populations over 100,000.”
 
Simplistic, yes. Doable, yes. And, there are many communities dealing with these issues and taking on solutions along the lines noted above.
 
I think what we both took away from our email conversation was that we need to recognize as a first step the different challenges for communities based on population and transportation connectedness. It’s going to take individuals, communities, businesses, leadership and government to come together because deep thought and long-term planning is the only way for us to make this happen. It’s not going to happen overnight. We need to all roll up our sleeves and get to work.

For those of you who read my weekly musings, this column might be a bit different. The thoughts that follow are ones I’ve voiced to many over the past 10 years or so regarding the future of housing and cities in the United States – thoughts that we must think about, deliver and reconstruct for our next generation to have affordable lives.
 
There is an ebb and flow to life, history, cities, products we use. Some things go up in price. Neighborhoods become sought after, or, conversely, they may decline into a dump. Roads deteriorate. Others are nicely paved over on a regular basis.

If you look at development in this country over the past 50 years or so, the industrial northern cities have declined. The southern cities, with the introduction of air conditioning in the 1960s, have flourished, adding population and youth from the declining manufacturing cities in the north (a broad, but also targeted observation).
 
Housing prices followed this trend, with growth and new homes popping up more quickly in Dallas, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, etc. With more construction, based on demand, prices rose.
 
Many factors go into the rapidly rising costs of homes (and cars and college and medical care) – cost of raw materials, safety requirements, energy, labor. In those southern and coastal cities, with the added push of population growth, prices accelerated.
 
Conversely during this period broadly encompassing the past 50 years, cities like Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo and more have stagnated or declined. The urban core became a skeleton. People left. The housing stock deteriorated. You could buy a small home or a condo more cheaply.

If we are going to have affordable housing for more people in the United States, it’s these cities that we must focus on. Builders, private capital and investment should more and more target those cities to reshape their future in a vibrant way. It’s about the only way I can see the next generation achieving what has been an American dream to own your home.
 
The Boston, L.A., New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Seattle metro areas are totally unaffordable in terms of a home purchase for 95-98 percent of our population from what I read and discuss with people I know who live in those urban areas. Those cities all face problems in terms of finding people to fill jobs of all types who make less than (insert your high dollar amount here) dollars. If you don’t make XX, you can’t live there, and often can’t live anywhere remotely nearby, so you live in a tent, at the YMCA, 62 miles down the highway (with a 90-minute commute, or more) a van down by the river or buddy up with 12 other people in a group home. I don’t know how, but some people make it work.
The broader, conceptual point we must consider as a country is “where should people be living?” When places become so popular, only the uber elite can afford to live there (and raise a family), we must look elsewhere.

That’s where my reinvigorating Toledo perspective comes into play, something, as I noted above, I’ve ranted about to many people for at least 10 years. Offer incentives. Cities must look for ways to bring youth to their core, to invest in such a way to create that attractive environment that reverses decline into an incline. Move up rather than move out.

This can be done. Make no mistake about it. In some ways, due to necessity, it is already happening. Major smart growth and rehabbing is occurring in Milwaukee and Detroit, and I would be confident in other similar cities (without having that exact data in front of me).
 
Affordable homes can drive this equation, or actually become the reward for those who choose to take the personal initiative to bring back a declining neighborhood. This IS happening and will continue to happen, but with greater visibility and local pushing, we will find the livable cities in the future are the industrial declining cities of the past.

​One of the cool things about Jack Reacher in the series of Reacher novels is that he packs light. He is ready to go. He has no address. When he leaves one town, he brings the clothes on his back and a toothbrush.
 
Ah, to be some mobile. Wouldn’t that be marvelous?
 
My wife and I hit on this topic recently, how BACK IN THE OLD DAYS, you’d go see a friend for the weekend and you had close to the Jack Reacher number of items in your toiletry back. Maybe a comb, toothpaste, toothbrush. Anything else you would figure out.
 
Man, have those days evaporated. I’m not sure when the threshold was crossed to taking a BIG BAGGIE of items on trips. Regardless of when this changed, multiple extra items now go in that carrying case, even if we’re only heading out for a couple of days.

Take, for example, Advil and Tums. I bring both these days. Do I always need them? Of course not, and mostly I don’t. But, I want to be prepared if my body gets stiff from a drive or airplane ride and I could use an Advil to even things out, I want to have it with me. Same with Tums. Typically, they are unnecessary. But, eat or drink just a little too much at this stage of life and heartburn is a reality. Toss the Tums in.
 
Years ago, I didn’t floss. Now I feel guilty missing one day of flossing. Make sure that goes in bag.
 
Vitamins? Supplements? No way I needed or used any of that stuff 30 years ago. Slowly, several have been added to my daily regime to help keep the joints functioning properly, a daily probiotic for digestion, a multi vitamin, among others.
 
Then there are prescriptions. Once you get past a certain age, it’s pretty hard not to have at least one or two prescriptions your doctor wants you to take. Slip them in the baggie.
 
Fifteen years ago I was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy. It affects my feet, causing numbness, tingling, burning, pain. To handle that and keep the syndrome from deteriorating more quickly, I go through several routines using various implements. These include a foot roller, a gel to put on my feet at night and an electric impulse apparatus that sends tiny jolts to help relieve the pain and increase circulation. Those can’t fit in the toiletry bag, so place them in the bigger traveling bag.
 
Unlike Reacher, spontaneity seems unattainable with travel today. You have to think ahead. That means clothing and attire as well. If you head to a wedding and will attend the reception the night before, you must have the proper clothing for both.

Might it rain on the trip? Make sure you pack your rain jacket.
 
What if the temperature is expected to drop? Do you need long underwear? Shorts or pants or both? Do you need boots to walk in snow or can you get by with just one pair of shoes? All those dang considerations.
 
If we could only be Reacher, traveling light, taking life as it comes. Back in 1982, when I bicycled across North America, I packed and lived lightly. It was great. That was a different time and a different trip. I’m going to work on this, add spontaneity. That will likely be okay until I twist my back or eat too much pizza.

When the presidential election ended in November, I think the majority of people in the United States heaved a titanic sigh for at least one reason: political advertising would be over. True, yes. But not for long.
 
I’ve launched attacks in the past on this column about how horrific, misleading and downright false far too many political ads are. Downright lies proliferate. Innuendos abound. Most ads aren’t designed to inform, but instead break the opposing candidate down, and make you – the target of the ads – feel the person being attacked is a jerk, loser, thief, criminal, dangerous.
 
As the ads wear you down, even the most vigilant of us start to wonder if there is a nugget of truth in all the lies. In this way they get you. Your defenses lag. Your antenna to sift through garbage turns itself off. Then, whammo, you find yourself hating someone.
 
The thing I remember most deeply from the day after the presidential election is how I felt bad. The relentless nature of the attacks from both candidates (and, of course, this is not limited to presidential elections) – because they are designed to make you feel bad things about the other candidate – make you feel bad yourself. You feel bad about your country.  You feel bad about the direction we are taking. This leads to some of the malaise many people feel in the U.S. about the political process, our politicians, our expectations, and the general sense that no one is doing anything good.
 
There is a lot of good being done by a lot of people in this country. That occurs at the local, state and national levels, and includes businesses, politicians, bureaucrats, community leaders, scientist, engineers, people of faith. We don’t hear about that much though because the ads dominate our senses.
 
Follow the money. Those who have it inject their bucks into various campaigns. Follow the money and you follow the hate and lies.
 
Which in a roundabout way gets me back to today in Wisconsin where we have a state Supreme Court race being contested.
 
The INSTANT ads started being run (maybe six weeks ago?), they were negative. If you know nothing of the two candidates (probably true of 95 percent of the Wisconsin electorate), you would think both of the candidates were evil personified, letting rapists and killers back onto the streets with nary a thought as to the consequences.
 
That’s not case, as I’ve had the opportunity to see and hear both candidates speak in-person to the Milwaukee Rotary and Milwaukee Press Club. Both care about the state, care about the judiciary and respect what being a judge is all about – enforcing the law to the best of their abilities. You’ll find places you could quibble with either one. You may disagree with their perspective on an issue or align yourself politically with one or the other. That’s fair. Choose to vote on those merits.
 
DON’T choose to vote based on the ads assaulting you. Recently, seven ads in a row came up on the TV for one or the other candidate, before one for a plumber finally ended the string. Sigh.
 
We all will continue to be overwhelmed in this way. That makes it tremendously important to do your own research, read, verify, think. It’s hard. Informed voting isn’t easy. In some ways, in today’s world, it’s actually extremely complicated because we are all being manipulated in multiple directions.
 
There is no perfect solution to this dilemma. The most solid path forward individually for voters is stay informed rather than relying on ads as a source.  Good luck. 

​How do you regenerate content? How can you juice your creativity?
 
In our current culture, coming up with content to entertain audiences is a big deal. Think how much you consume: movies, podcasts, columns, videos, YouTube, television shows, all that stuff streaming on those multiple services – Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Brit Box, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Peacock just to name a few that I can come up with off the top of my head. I presume there are many more.
 
They all must come up with angles, and put together shows that get people to watch and listen. It is hard. How do they differentiate?

As a writer, I face this challenge every week, the creative challenge. What is something worth writing about? Did something funny happen to me in the past few weeks that I can riff off? Is there a complex issue that has jumped into my consciousness that I can use as a platform to make a deeper point?
 
Creativity rises in different ways for different people. Capturing that impulse in a tangible format is a challenge, as is presenting it in such a way that people want to watch, hear, read what you have to say.
 
We are assaulted by entertainment choices, which means it is far too easy to turn someone off. Don’t like the opening sentence of my column? Click to the next story. Bored after the first ten minutes of a movie? Stream another one. Podcast making you snore? Wake up to someone else who charges your batteries.
 
My wife and I have left much of U.S.-based television series in the dust. The slam bang, quick cut, using violence and guns and car chases and crashes to overcome the lagging of plots. Watch U.S. television shows with the sound off one evening when you have a few spare moments and you might be stunned with how frequently scenes cut from one to the next, and how violence, guns and crashes are used to take up creative space. It does make you wonder about how violent our culture is.
 
But, away from that musing, and back to the creative challenge. Spicing up tired plots (if you watch a regular television series, think about the ones that keep you coming back because they have something fresh occur that keeps you engaged) is crucial to your attention span. Yes, we are drawn to certain characters, want the bad guys to get blown up, but we also need something to get us outside the box.

That is the creative challenge. Given all the songs and genres for songs, I sometimes find it hard to believe that anyone ever delivers something new. But they do. The artists that cut through to your heart and soul, getting you to repeat their lyrics (so catchy), and hum along while you air guitar it, are the ones you listen to.
 
Regenerating content takes time, thought, revisions, letting loose of preconceived notions and being willing to take yourself down a path previously unexplored. Entertainment products face this creative challenge, but it is also present in businesses and other parts of our lives, even freshening up our relationships with new things.
 
Take a walk somewhere to experience a dramatic view. Drive a different route to work (try it). Read an author recommended by a friend. Watch a movie outside your comfort zone. Put your belt on the opposite way you normally do. Now sit down and create.

​Most of us live mundanely. We go through routines. We repeat behaviors. Sometimes we get out of our ruts and travel and take on some new activity. But, if there’s someone watching from afar or capturing us on video, one could argue we live a boring life.

I’m not saying that’s bad or wrong. Just the way it often is.
 
The people who run social media sites get this. Because they mine our boringness, knowing we want to shake things up or get some novelty, so they send clips, images, messages that target our habits.
 
I’ll focus on Facebook, because they are the most egregious from what I can tell, but I’m sure this applies to Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, you name it. They track you. They follow what you access. Then they attack.
 
I stay away from clicking things on that don’t come from friends on Facebook. Sometimes though (in my boredom), I click on something that looks intriguing. Oooooooops!
 
For the next 27 days, probably longer, I start getting similar things sent to me. They have those 15-second videos that show people doing goofy things. I made the mistake of watching a few (one leads to another, which leads to another). WRONG.
 
Of course, more 15-second videos of people demonstrating idiotic behavior rained down on me. I blocked them. I hid them. Nothing seemed to help.
 
Facebook knows when you are bored, and they know how to feed off your boredom addiction. Their AI senses your doldrums, waiting, waiting to pounce and overwhelm you with useless images.
 
One of the ways you know you’re bored is when you begin watching knot-tying videos. These are clips demonstrating how to tie different knots – the figure eight, the clove hitch, the water knot, the fisherman’s knot.  You know what I mean.
 
You have nothing else to do, and you see these hands meticulously wrapping the twine around and around, up and over, under, then cinched. Holy cow, maybe I can do that.
 
Then they have you. Facebook/Twitter/TikTok/Instagram captured you. And here it comes: more and more knot-tying 15 second videos coming your way, enough to saturate your senses for years and years.
 
What gets me is how quickly crap starts to come your way and accumulate on your feed. Similar stuff to what you just accessed can arrive on your screen within seconds. And, it doesn’t seem to stop. Keeps coming and coming.
 
My advice, of course, is never click on something unless you really care. If it’s a true hobby and something you obsess about, by all means go for it.
 
If not, let it go. Don’t let AI and the social media maggots suck you in. Once they get their hooks in you, you’ll be inundated.
 
I do my best to delete, block, or hide posts coming my way that I have no further interest in, but they seem to propagate like mushrooms in the forest after a spring rain -- keep popping up.
 
As an old school-type person, I probably fall into the category of people who don’t logically figure out better ways to eliminate unwanted electronic information coming my way. I’m getting better, still figuring it out, and once in awhile there’s that nirvana moment, where you go, “AHA, now I know how to stop you.” You feel successful when that happens. Maybe that’s the learning curve – learning how to cut the crap out and eliminate boredom.

​Last year was a bad one for my intuition. I’m a person who relies a lot on hunches, educated thoughts that should play out a certain way, events that logically should come together to cause an outcome. This approach adds up to intuition.
 
I rely on intuition. It serves me well. Quite clearly, trusting my instincts in many situations is a critical positive for me to function successfully on multiple fronts.

You may shrug at this. “Who cares? Intuition is a joke.” I get it. You may want the facts and data about every issue you face in your personal, professional or social life.
 
Facts give you background. They are important. But they also only provide the framework as to what happens next. You still have to coalesce additional variables in your head, look forward, perhaps make an assumption or two on trends or human behavior to effectively project sporting events, political outcomes or what’s the best destination for the next vacation for you and your loved one(s).
 
Over the years, I’ve honed my intuition abilities, parlaying them into a skill for predicting drive times for car trips, the weather and sporting outcomes. Just after the turn of the century, I remember a drive I took from eastern Nebraska (Columbus) to the far western region (Scottsbluff) and saying to myself, “hmm, that should be about six hours and five minutes to get there?” (about what I remember from my memory banks) and getting there within five minutes of my intuitive prediction. Thought to myself, “wow,” afterwards.
 
It morphed from there. I got into consistently and effectively using my gut to state how long a trip would take and being very close most of the time.
 
This skill/talent, if we want to call it that, for having a feel for something, was also applied to sports. Rather than choosing the best teams, I used intuition, feel and chemistry to pick winners in discussions with friends, and found myself more often than not getting it right. The caveat is I stuck to teams, sports and players where I had greater knowledge. It was fun.
 
Weather also fell into this realm. Having a sense when the weather would change, due to the wind currents, is something I refined over the years, particularly from my bicycle trip across North America in 1982. Stay outside, feel the humidity, gauge the wind currents and you can do well predicting what’s next.

Which is why 2024 was weird for me. My intuition was off. NFL predictions were bad. My college – the University of Illinois – kept playing against my intuition on the basketball court as again and again I got games wrong that I “felt” accurate about.
 
I messed up predicting snowstorms and thunderstorms, intuition failing miserably. Hard to say what was off. And, I’m not sure what my point is.

Other than sometimes we have bad years. Things go wrong. They don’t turn out the way you think they will. Your intuition stinks. But, you slog on, hoping that your thinking, guessing, feeling, predicting improve and you get back in the rhythm.

​Recent studies show that kids giving up their phones while in school is a good thing. Really? That is so dang surprising!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Sarcasm aside, I’m not sure where I read about the study, but I seem to remember they said that turning the phones off and handing them to the teachers or placing them in a container before class were two options. In some schools, it might have been by choice that they released their technology lifeline, if I remember correctly.
 
Whether by choice or mandated, it’s been DISCOVERED that the kids seem to learn more without their phone connection. Focus is up. Creativity rises. Engagement increases.

It all sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Why didn’t this happen sooner? And, why doesn’t every school apply this principle (FYI, for the sake of humor I just used my phone to determine whether to use “principle” or “principal” in this sentence; I was 98 percent sure, but just wanted to be grammatically correct)?
 
When you don’t have the phone, it eliminates some (not all) distractions. That doesn’t mean students won’t look at someone they are attracted to. It doesn’t mean they won’t marvel at the snowstorm billowing outside and hoping classes will be cancelled so they can go home and head to the local hill for some sledding. It doesn’t mean students won’t look outside on a nice spring day and see the birds whizzing by, the trees budding and grass growing greener and want to running around playing tag or some other warm day inspired activity.
 
No, kids will be kids, whether they are 11- or 17-years-old. They will find ways to not pay attention. Sometimes even choose to disrupt the class because they can. Some will just plain be jerks.
 
Eliminating phones in the classroom is a big step in a positive direction. It also sets a tone: there is a right time and wrong time to be on the phone. “Right now you need to think on your own, work with your classmates, interact, listen to each other, and figure out a solution to the problem I just posted,” the teacher says.
 
Real life will have those mandated interactions in their future. Much is loaded, saved and available on our phones, but the individual must still figure out what to do with it. So many answers to so many of our questions. That is all well and good, and not about to go away any time soon.

So, what’s the challenge for educators? What’s the challenge in the classroom?
 
Quite frankly, it’s to learn all those other skills that bode well for a student’s future. They must learn how to think critically, how to discern truth from fiction, how to determine the facts of a situation and come up with workable options to solve problems. And do this by bouncing ideas off others, arguing, debating, listening, choosing.
 
One of the cell carriers currently advertises putting your phone away for one hour, one day, one week. I like it. It also sends a strong message to step away and get back into real life.
 
If more schools and other influencers begin to hold solid sway over our massive cell phone use, there is hope us human creatures will improve our relations with each other. Keep pushing.

​If you are like me, you probably have some nostalgia for certain clothing items. For whatever reason, you attach emotional significance to a jacket, pair of shoes, shorts, sweatshirt, hat, whatever. You don’t want to let go.
 
There’s an element of hoarding in all of us. You squirrel away your kids’ clothes in the hope that if grandchildren arrive you can hand over tiny sweaters and caps to be worn once or twice by that next generation.
 
Perhaps you save books, because you feel at some point in your life you’re going to reread them. You want to see if the plot and characters remain relevant 27 years later.
 
One item, for me, that I love is my Adidas winter jacket. The base color is black and it has those Adidas stripes (green) on the shoulders. It’s got a hood. The outside is your basic winterproof material and the inside is sweatshirt-lined. It’s warm, comfortable and serves its purpose.
 
It’s also a piece of my wardrobe that I want to keep indefinitely. I’m not completely sure why.
 
I purchased the jacket around the turn of the century, so it’s 25-or-more-years-old. Due to its age, I have a bit of desire to see how long I can hang onto it. It hasn’t fallen apart, so it should keep serving me.
 
Recently, I was faced with a dilemma. The zipper broke. What to do?
 
I discussed this with my wife, going over the pros and cons of getting rid of the jacket. It was old enough where in good conscious I could see purchasing a new winter jacket. But, at the same time, I was attached to it because I’d had it for so long and it truly was a perfect fitting piece of apparel. I also liked the colors, the stripes and that it came from a period of time when we lived in Columbus, NE. Not sure why that made any difference to me, but for some odd reason I attached good memories to that. That can be a big reason we don’t want to give things up.
 
After batting the broken zipper decision around with my wife, I came down on the side of getting the zipper replaced. Let’s do it.
 
She took it to our local cleaners, where they farm out those types of simple repairs. Two weeks later, I got the jacket back, and we were $100 poorer.
 
When I heard the cost, I was stunned. “We could have gotten a new jacket,” I said with extreme irritation. I had figured fixing the zipper would cost about 40 bucks. That I could deal with. The $100 price tag made me think deeply about the possession. What is it worth?
 
We keep or discard things in our lives after doing those mental machinations. Despite an inherent longing for an article of clothing, at some point in time you’re going to give it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, or throw it in trash. It’s worn out, beat up, no longer fits, or you don’t care anymore.
 
Cleaning out our closets releases memories and cleanses the soul a bit. We retain emotional attachments for many items we wear, but sometimes you have to say goodbye. That’s the last zipper I’m going to buy for my winter Adidas jacket, you can bet on that.