I'm having a hard time getting into the Tour this year.   Too many repetitions of the Mich Ultra, "my body tells me no, but I won't quit" ad, this year conspicuously without the presence of a certain disgraced winner.  Or I'm getting old.  Men riding bicycles with advertisements on their lycra just doesn't strike me as important anymore.  The countryside of France, the backdrop, catches my eye more than the race, the tableau of history.  In times of moral crisis, the endurance of sport seems unimportant, and getting excited over besting the next guy to the finish line seems egotistical.  And spending time watching it, I get that uncomfortable feeling--and writers probably get it often--of too much time on my hands not fulfilling a purpose.

We engage in commerce, beyond the things we need, out of a sense of shared values.  As we grow up, the I-wants are less and less for the sake of belonging to a group, as fans do, but rather, more thought out.  Of course moral values might be construed, with a bit of work, from the seasons of a Gehrig, a Williams or a DiMaggio or a Maris, reasonably enough, though they might not be the be-all and end-all of moral values beyond that of showing up to work.  Ultimately, there must be a recognition of deeper moral values, which may themselves involve discretion and life experience.  One day one wakes up from lazy slumber and finds liberal arts far more important than Lance Armstrong.  Which I must say with some embarrassment.  Oh well--sports are supposed to be important to belonging in society.   Being in shape does indeed help the mind do its work.

Growing up, you must give yourself some credit, for directions, for newly informed feelings about that things we seem to accept as routine.

I suppose our opinions are deeper set than we might think when opening our mouths, relying less on a historical record we could cogently explain in debate, relying more on a deeper mind's eye of private and personal values.  John, Robert, and Teddy too, speak to someone perhaps most of all because of the literate modes they engaged in and represented.  Ronnie Reagan may speak to another, a different set of people's gut values.  One from either camp might argue all day about the record, legislative, internationally, historically, without getting to the basics of the deeper informing value.  Or maybe not.

I suppose one of the basic things about religions is that they make the point that if one stands for the truest and deepest of values, than life will be okay.  A covenant, an agreement, a deal with the divine.  As the creator of The Sopranos put it, you'll watch the show and at the end it will still be okay to go out and buy things.  Life is, as we all know, complicated.

And so, where along the road do I find my values headed, I guess is the question.  Perhaps that is why one writes, in order to better find them out.  Good old pen to paper, as it were.