Anti-Politics

I recall picking up a long time ago (in graduate school) a book by the Hungarian writer George Konrad called Anti-Politics. Like so many books I have read, I can hardly remember a thing about it years later, but my almost visceral memory is that his point was that we have become too obsessed with politics, the yin and yang of party, taking sides on every issue until all of life begins to appear to us simply as political issues upon which one is called to take a side; while real life, life as it is lived by real people, escapes.

Blogging, of course, feeds the political obsessions of many people, myself included. But today I thought I'd just -- as a heuristic exercise -- try to identify things that aren't political that mean a lot to me and make life, real life, worth living.

1. My wife. Best person I know.
2. My children. The adventure of a lifetime.
3. My parents. Lifelong exemplars of how to live purposefully.
4. My mother-in-law. Saintly.
5. Home improvements... is Home Depot great, or what?
6. Working in the yard on the weekend... ditto.
7. Neighbors with small children playing whiffle ball in their yards with my kids. Neighbors who build ice rinks in their backyards in the winter.
8. Neighborhoods like ours with sidewalks, and neighbors walking their dogs, and children learning how to ride their bikes.
9. Our parish... walking to church, walking to school, seeing people we know at every step.
10. Little League games.
11. Piano lessons.
12. Memorial Day soccer tournaments.
13. Reading Alan Furst novels.
14. Listening to all 162 Cardinals games on the Internet.
15. Albert Pujols.
16. Shrimp on the barbecue.
17. My wife's new iPod (which she lets me borrow sometimes).
18. Playing catch with the little man.
19. Reading Little House on the Prairie to my daughters.
20. Legos.
21. Eggos.
22. Blackberries from the supermarket at a price an average person can afford.... we are living in miraculous times when luxuries like that are commonplace.
23. The birch tree over my patio.
24. The spotlight that shines on our statue of the Virgin Mary at night, and then on our rose bushes, and then on our American flag, and then on the cupola on the top of our garage, and the weathervane at its peak.
25. The two cardinals who fly around our backyard in the morning... we have named them Harry and Hermione.
26. Watching Pride and Prejudice (the Jennifer Ehle version).
27. Watching Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version).
28. Duke basketball.
29. Springtime in Wisconsin after a long long winter.

You get the picture. Life is good. Be not afraid.