Still Digging: An Ode to the Searchers

Got a message from an old friend from JHS. We’re not as tight as we used to be. Different states, different lives. Back then, moving out of the Bronx was like escaping gravity; now it’s like drifting into different solar systems. We keep tabs on each other the way you do these days: Facebook statuses, the occasional like or comment, a birthday notification that reminds you both that you’re still here. Still breathing. Still digging.

He pinged me to check on another friend, one of the old crew, but she’s always been the glue. Just to make sure she was alright. We don’t talk much, but there’s this unspoken code: you check in, even if it’s from a thousand miles away. Just a pulse check to make sure the ghosts of our childhood are still walking around in their grown-up skins. There’s comfort in that. Knowing that even if we don’t talk, we still look out. It’s like we’re all miners in the same cave, shouting across the dark to make sure the others are still swinging their pickaxes.

In the middle of catching up, he asked me, “Shouldn’t we all be richer by now?” And I laughed, because damn if that isn’t the question of the century. I told him, “I had plenty of caviar dreams. Not sure what happened along the way. I blame other people. That helps.” He laughed too, and it felt like 1991 for just a second.

It was a very “Piano Man” moment…

After we hung up, I sat back and put on Pink Houses. John Mellencamp’s voice kicked in, that rough edge of experience scratching at every word: “Ain’t that America, for you and me. Ain’t that America, somethin’ to see, baby. Ain’t that America, home of the free. Little pink houses for you and me.”

It’s a song that’s so damn catchy you almost forget it’s not really celebrating. It’s a sigh disguised as an anthem, a confession that the American Dream is more concept than concrete. The pink houses he’s talking about, they’re not palaces. They’re not the grand visions of success we had as kids. They’re cramped little boxes stacked up on top of each other, paint chipping off the sides, picket fences rotting from neglect. It’s the dream in its most basic, survivalist form. A roof. A door. A place to call your own, even if you’re just barely holding on to it.

There’s that line: “There’s a young man in a t-shirt, listening to a rockin’ roll station. He’s got greasy hair, greasy smile. He says, ‘Lord, this must be my destination.’”

And I missed it. For years, I thought Mellencamp was selling the idea that just scraping by wasn’t enough. But I get it now. That kid isn’t sad. He isn’t bitter. He’s got grease on his hands, rock and roll in his ears, and he’s happy right where he is. That’s his destination. He found it.

The search isn’t about climbing ladders or buying bigger houses or getting the perfect life. It’s about finding yours. Maybe it’s millions in the bank. Maybe it’s fixing cars in your backyard while Springsteen plays on loop. Maybe it’s running a food truck or coaching little league. It’s yours. That’s what Mellencamp was singing about. That the dream is yours to find, no matter how small or unremarkable it might seem to someone else.

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An Ode to the Searchers

Here’s to the ones still digging.

To the ones with dust on their hands and hope in their eyes, scraping away at the earth, clawing for something real.

You might not know what it looks like, but you know it’s there, somewhere beneath the surface.

Here’s to the single moms holding down two jobs, praying for just one day where the math works out and the bills are covered with something left over.

To the fathers who skipped sleep to fix the furnace and still made it to work before sunrise, clutching a gas station coffee like it’s a lifeline.

To the ones sitting in parked cars outside therapists’ offices, hands trembling on the steering wheel, wondering if talking will make the ghosts any quieter.

To those praying that test comes back negative, sitting by the phone with the kind of anxiety that makes your hands sweat and your stomach twist.

To the ones hoping their dead bedroom resurrects, that one night their partner reaches across the sheets instead of rolling away.

To the ones who just want their kid to go back to school, to walk through those doors with a backpack and a grin instead of a frown.

To the guy who watches the Girl from Ipanema walk by his job every morning, and still hopes she’ll look back one day and smile.

To the woman in the grocery line, digging through her purse for the right change, hoping the total’s just a little less this time.

To the ones still reaching backward, warming their hands on the glow of old memories.

The ones who still talk about that championship game in ‘87, when the lights were brighter, and their knees didn’t ache after a simple jog.

The ones who still tell the same stories at barbecues, fishing out details like they were gold coins from a well-worn purse of nostalgia.

To those still searching the rearview, hoping the best of their lives didn’t already pass them by.

Here’s to the dreamers who never stopped dreaming, even when the world told them to grow up, to get real, to pick a safer path.

To the ones who scribble in journals after midnight, sketching out lives they haven’t lived yet but still believe in.

Here’s to the old friends who check in, not because they want something, but because they remember.

Because somewhere between the laughs and the years and the distance, they still want to make sure you’re okay.

That you’re still breathing.

That you’re still digging.

To the ones who refuse to stop.

Who don’t let the rusted-out cars or the little pink houses with peeling paint convince them this is as good as it gets.

Who still believe in treasure buried somewhere just beneath the surface, if they can just swing the pickaxe one more time.

Here’s to the searchers.

To the ones who keep looking,

keep dreaming,

keep clawing at the dirt

because something inside won’t let them stop.

I see you.

I’m with you.

We’re still digging.

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Thanks for reading. Here’s more sappy stuff, if you’re into it 🙂

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Bracing for the Fall: A Gen X Life in Seasons