​ 
The world is at your fingertips. In certain ways.
 
Let me explain. Several weeks back I was enjoying a cocktail on our back deck. Crisp late afternoon weather. The trees swaying in a light breeze. Very meditative.

I have my phone with me. It buzzes and a friend I’ll call Noz has texted me. I smile and respond.
 
He’s designed some buttons for our upcoming 50th high school reunion. They are touching and meaningful.
 
I sip my drink. Text him back. Birds chirp. Nature beckons. I connect through modern technology.

I begin to think: “No way would someone be doing this 15 years ago.” While the basic technology was there 15 years ago, we hadn’t chosen to connect with others to the degree we do in 2024. Wireless connectivity has seamlessly integrated into most of our lives, putting the world at our fingertips and letting us do things we’d not previously considered.
 
At the same time I’m communicating Noz, another friend we’ll call Haz is sending me designs for a golf vest I’ve created. It’s something I do regularly for an annual gathering with my two brothers and our three sons. Haz sends me a mockup of what the vests look like.

I respond to her, ask two short questions. She texts me back. I give her the okay. She moves forward with the order, which will be in my hands in less than two weeks. I dust my hands off, sip my cocktail.

These are not world-changing events by any means. Yet I marveled while sitting there enjoying my evening how easily we can communicate with others for fun or to accomplish some level of business/work. Send a message. Talk to someone. Make a decision. Access data. Sip a cocktail. Munch on some peanuts. Inhale Swiss cheese.
 
A phone call came in from our younger daughter. We worked through some details for her upcoming wedding.
 
My assigner for basketball officiating sent an email seeking open dates for availability in the upcoming season. I accessed my schedule, figured out where I could help him and sent back the days I could work.
 
Our dog (Pepper) and our male cat (Smudge) stood forlornly at the screen door. I got up to let them out, grabbed some radishes from the fridge and munched on them as I resettled in my chair outside.
 
I felt relaxed, unrushed, comfortable, tapping away on the phone, contemplating nature, the wonders of our world at my fingertips allowing me to have this early evening time that wedded meditation while working through minor organization details.
 
Maybe it was the alcohol that made me contemplative. The more I sat there though, the more I thought about how weird it is that we can do all these things at once, information flying through the air to emerge on our phones so we can solve problems, make decisions, deliver information to others or just plain chat with a friend or relative.
 
Because the phone is so ubiquitous in our lives, we probably take these types of days in stride. For one day though, I marveled how I held some of the world in my fingertips.

​There’s a lot to be said for reverence of trees. Respect. Awe. Love.
 
This occurred to me many years ago. Recently, those thoughts have been powerfully reinforced.
 
The quiet beauty of a majestic tree is hard to beat. The uniqueness of its size, breadth, height, color inspires poets, writers, nature lovers, anyone who breathes the air on this planet.
 
Well more than 10 years ago, when social media still appeared to have some value to produce positive things, I considered doing a weekly photo of trees in the community in which we lived.  The book, “Humans of New York,” got me thinking. That book is a  photoblog and book of street portraits and interviews collected on the streets of New York City.
 
At that time, I’d recently read the book, affected deeply by the photos and the lives of those individuals interviewed. As I drove my neighborhood during that time period, I thought of the lives of trees, which can last so much longer than a human life, and wondered what those trees saw in their lifetimes.
 
What storms had they encountered and survived? How many baby birds had been born on their limbs? How far had their nuts, berries or seeds dispersed in the wind?
 
I thought, too, of the deepness of their roots – how far and deep they drilled themselves into the earth to nourish their branches above the surface, how they could continue sending their tendrils out to store water and nourishment because they had no place to go. Once planted, that’s where they’re going to stay.
 
As humans we’re not designed for one destination. Our ship should leave the harbor, not remain anchored. A large part of our mission is this exploration of our surroundings, determining meaning, and what’s next, responding to every type of circumstance that comes our way. Adjustment.
 
Tree roots make me think of human roots. Though trees are anchored, they continue to reach, their branches seeking broader territory, their seed dispersing.
 
Humans are rooted, but we are born with feet to travel, to explore. Our creation wants us to walk, run, hike, explore, see where we’re headed next.
 
Trees have to wait. They must adjust and use their skills to bring those things necessary to their survival too them. Hence the expanding branches and deepening roots in the turf.
 
Reverence for trees made me think of those things. Sitting on our back deck, looking up at towering pines and great oaks, the sunset filtering through, drove thoughts: What do the trees think? Do they reach out to us? Do they get upset when we cut their brethren down? We have no way to know.
 
The unknowing adds to my reverence for trees, my respect for them. Many grow much older than I ever will, and never complain. They don’t point fingers or assign blame. They remain sturdy. They provide carbon for the next generation.
 
Trees survive, they grow, give us shade and nourishment, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They provide carbon for the next generation.
 
If they could speak, what would they say to us?  What I would say to them is, “You are reverent, marvelous. Don’t change your mission.”

​What’s viral for Taylor Swift, LeBron James or Denzel Washington, isn’t viral for me. Their reach throughout their fanbase is in the multiple millions, I’m confident. Mine is many iterations below that.
 
Going viral deserves a bit of a discussion though. What’s viral for one person isn’t viral for another.

Famous and/or tremendously wealthy people live in an entirely different world from the one 98 percent of us toil in every day. Because they are known, they have the capacity to influence tens of millions of people by what they say or do.

This can be good or bad. There are many in society who hate celebrities or billionaires and when those individuals see a post by the rich and famous, they love nothing more than chopping down the tall sunflower. When their social media posts go viral, they can be vilified or worshipped. It goes with their territory.
 
For the rest of us toiling in the soil, though our messages may be tremendously more important or useful than the famous person, but our viral status is minimized. Our reach is small. Our message may go to a base set of friends and that’s about it.
 
People frequently ask me what the “reach” is for this weekly column. I let them know that it gets emailed directly to about 400 people. Whether they read it, I don’t know. I receive feedback regularly. On a good week, I may get 10-15 writing directly to me, often starting an engaging conversation.
 
In addition to the email, the weekly column is posted to LinkedIn and Twitter. I doubt anyone reads it on Twitter. LinkedIn is a different story.
 
Due to the work-related nature of LinkedIn and the broad subject base, I occasionally tap a nerve, the column goes “viral” in my small world. It’s a relative term.
 
On average, most weeks the column gets approximately 150 “impressions.” Basically all that means is someone checked it out. On a good week, that may go up to 250. On an excellent week, it may hit 400-500. And once in a great while it launches into the stratosphere and rises to 1,000+. Perhaps three or four times, the column crested 2,500+.
 
That’s viral for me. Not millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions. But, over a thousand.
 
Which puts things in perspective. When you add in the number of “likes” or “comments,” I sometimes feel like a viral tiger. “People enjoy this piece. They’re writing in. They’re sharing it with others.”
 
When that happens, the only thread I’ve found that turns a weekly column into something larger numbers of people appreciate is the “personal” nature of the writing. The more you write from the heart and hit home with others who can relate, the more that people pay attention and want to let you know that what you wrote means something important to them.
 
You can’t bottle that. There is no viral formula. The celebrities can pick their noses and get 2.3 million views.
 
The 98 percent of the rest of us have to really demonstrate worthwhile content that impacts others. It’s hard. Our viral will never be LeBron’s viral.
 
But, maybe that makes ours more meaningful.

If you live long enough, you’ve probably been hit by crime at some point. Though I don’t remember why, for some reason that thought came to me while on our morning walk with the dog: most of us have been victims of some sort of crime, and how have we reacted to those incidents.
 
As I worked through that concept, it made me first consider listing the times you remember being on that short end of the stick. So, here goes. I’m not writing down lesser situations, ones where I’ve been threatened or someone “tried” to start a physical altercation with me.
 

1. My red stingray three-speed bicycle was stolen when our family moved to Kankakee, IL from New Jersey after my first football practice. Police found and retrieved it from the front porch of a teammate later that week.
2. While in college at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, the storage unit of my apartment building was ripped open from its hinges and all my stuff thrown around, and my bicycle stolen.
3. My car was vandalized inside (probably by drunken college students) while at the University of Illinois.
4. Another bicycle was stolen in Washington, D.C., and three other times my front or rear wheel tire was removed, once right in front of the guards at the U.S. Department of Energy.
5. Two other times my car has been broken into while living in D.C. and Maryland. Once, the window was broken and the thieves took a pair of John Lennon-like sunglasses, leaving my awesome baseball glove and a 1.5 liter bottle of vodka alone in the back seat. Go figure. An attempt was made to rip out the radio the other time (right in front of our house).
6. Our minivan was stolen while my wife and I were sleeping at a hotel in Topeka, KS. It was then used in a crime and left torched on the highway.

One of the points that rumbled through my mind while considering these events was the randomness of where they occurred. Crime can hit you anywhere.
 
It also makes you try and wrap your hand around the perpetrators. Who does these kinds of things? Why?
 
Quick conclusions are crimes are mostly about opportunity. When someone stupid or daring enough chooses to break the law, with the potential retribution from our system of justice, they think they can get away with something or they don’t think at all. Youth plays a role, as I would imagine it’s not 62-year-old cranky men taking advantage, but more likely a 16-19-year-old juiced up on adrenaline. And, for the sake of stereotyping, I would imagine most of these crimes were initiated by the male of our species.
 
Finally, there is that residual sense of how it affected you. In the aftermath, anger kicks in immediately. The thought, “if you could put your criminal instincts and creativity into something productive, our society would be so much better,” is the first that comes to mind. You wonder why people steal, what motivates them, how did they head down that path, and, of course, why did they select you, your car, your bicycle.
 
Then there are the residuals -- an understanding of trauma and how PTSD affects others from far more serious situations than mine. My older brother has had his home broken into multiple times. I often wonder how he and his wife continue to feel safe in their home.
 
I do know this. Since our car was stolen, and that was more than 10 years ago, my wife and I always find a lighted parking space as close to the front door of the hotel when we travel these days. And, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is part the windows and look down to see if the car is still there.
 
That tells you a bit about how we process these emotions. And I can only sympathize with others in this world (like Ukraine, the Middle East, Venezuela and Haiti, as four easy, quick examples that come to mind) who have to process far more horrible and traumatic events in their lives and move on as best they can. I find it very important to do my best to put things in perspective.