My son has a soccer game in a couple hours. He plays in a travel league. His team is made up of a great group of kids. It has been an absolute joy.
Lately, my son has been signaling that this may be his last year.
1/
The road is diverging. Kids who are hardcore into soccer are going in one direction and kids who just enjoy being on a competitive team are going another.
He might change his mind. We’ll see.
I will support his decision no matter what.
2/
But knowing that we may be nearing the end of his youth soccer days, each of these soccer Saturdays rests on me with a little more specialness, a little more meaning.
I am fully present for them with the wakefulness of someone who knows to capture it all, for it is fading.
4/
America was brainwashed into its relationship with guns by marketing.
I think about that a lot. Today’s gun culture is the result of marketing. What gun nuts think is a constitutional legacy of gun rights was manufactured by people and companies that benefitted.
As someone who worked in advertising and marketing, it is not hard to see how marketers found emotional triggers and then just pounded them for decades.
Entire generations now fully believe what they’ve been spoonfed.
Companies that profited from gun sales silenced some of the opposition with donations.
And then politicians discovered it could be used as a wedge issue.
It had nothing to do with the constitution or even guns.