Not Quite Everyman
There are maybe four billion males on our planet, about one hundred and eighty million in the United States, six million in Illinois, and two plus million in Cook County. Then there is me – one among billions. Am I unique? No. I am a well-off, midwestern, upper middle class, third generation Caucasian. Am I a midwestern “Everyman”? Not quite, but close enough to cite myself as an example.
How many thoughts, emotions and experiences well up over a lifetime? How many have meaning or are simply random memories? How many have defined who I am today? How many demand examination and resolution? How many might provide lessons and a bit of humor. They do provide a simple, representative account of an infant coming to maturity in this country. Is there a mantle here that drapes nicely over others of my kind? Maybe, and if so, that mantle and the lessons it holds might guide another into a reasonable semblance of maturity. Let’s give it a shot. My kids, my grandkids, my family and my friends should have interest. You might also.
Did it, Will it
Ever End?
Over the course of twelve years, Stephen Weiland chronicles an intense emotional bond with a woman he loved but could never fully have. What begins with a fleeting, passionate moment unfolds into a long journey of friendship, longing, hope, heartbreak, and self-reflection. Through letters never sent, poems written in moments of yearning, and reflections shaped by time, the author examines the fragile boundaries between friendship and love, desire and restraint, devotion and disappointment.
This memoir is not a conventional love story, it is the story of unrequited love, emotional persistence, and the human need to be seen and chosen. With lyrical prose and raw vulnerability, Weiland invites readers into his inner world as he questions his own motives, confronts loneliness, and searches for meaning in connection, loss, aging, and acceptance.
Did It, Will It Ever End? will resonate with readers who have loved deeply, waited too long, held on when they should have let go, or wondered how a single moment can echo through an entire lifetime.
Biased?
Who, Me?
There are maybe four billion males on our planet, about one hundred and eighty million in the United States, six million in Illinois, and two plus million in Cook County. Then there is me – one among billions. Am I unique? No. I am a well-off, midwestern, upper middle class, third generation Caucasian. Am I a midwestern “Everyman”? Not quite, but close enough to cite myself as an example.
What follows is a collection of thoughts and opinions that have occurred to me over the years. Starting with Obama’s presidency in 2008, I began writing them down. When something of interest occurred to me or when a memory argued for hard copy, I wrote it down. There may be some interest here for you. Clearly what these pages hold are my thoughts and opinions about politics and Political Correctness. If nothing else, these words will help define a mature and ardently conservative man to you, or raise a righteous anger toward a racist, fascist shredder of the Constitution and enemy of Democracy.
I validate the Winston Churchill aphorism “If you’re under thirty and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you’re over thirty and not a Conservative, you have no brain.” I almost joined the Peace Corps out of college. I voted for JFK and would have voted for RFK had he survived. Then I left my parent’s home, read Atlas Shrugged, took a job, got married and “got a brain” well before thirty. Beware. I am a Conservative – a strong Conservative.
Hear me Roar… Quietly
There are maybe four billion males on our planet, about one hundred and eighty million in the United States, six million in Illinois, and two plus million in Cook County. Then there is me – one among billions. Am I unique? No. I am a well-off, midwestern, upper middle class, third generation Caucasian. Am I a midwestern “Everyman”? Not quite, but close enough to cite myself as an example.
What interests us? What events, thoughts, opinions, observations draw our interest? And then, do these interests define who we are? I am a well off, older, third generation Caucasian cis male. I began life in Rogers Park, Chicago, the son of a middle-class family. I finished college with two degrees, married, went to work, and now live in an upscale neighborhood north of Chicago. I don’t fit in any recognized identity group – nonwhite, poor, LGBTQ+, immigrant, trans, disadvantaged, or ethnic. As such I feel invisible. I ask to be judged on who I am and what I’ve accomplished: not on some collection of check boxes. I have a voice. Hear me.
A Catholic Grammar School Morality
In this year, in this country, in this swirl of ideas, in this confrontation of ideas, opinions, and beliefs, how can we come to certainty about anything? The simple answer is that there is no certainty. Not quite true. You can make a strong argument that the physical sciences provide objective reality – certainty. But stray a bit away from this objective reality – stray into philosophy, ideologies, government, and morality - and certainty morphs into opinions, argument, uncertainty and rancor.
Morality is a prime and telling example of uncertainty. What is it and how do we learn it? What happens when there is no belief in a benevolent and loving God? What happens when there is no overarching set of rules, commandments and inspirations that guide our daily lives. What happens when there is no collection of God inspired ethics and morality that channel us away from evil and toward the good? What happens when the most recent collection of secular ethics is all that we have to point us in the right direction, if in fact it provides any overall direction?
This short story provides my answer. It recounts how I learned about morality, how I became immersed in the good and loving lessons of Christian morality and came to certainty. If there is no belief in God in the home, in education, in the media, and no belief communicated to the kids they will learn the current secular ethic, the mean streets ethic, or no ethic at all.