So I was talking with a dad friend yesterday and we were getting into how there’s no community. We were out at a thing at Dave and Buster’s, which is fine, and I started ranting and raving, like I do, about so many things. It first started with just “everything is too efficient.” He was sort of claiming, “Oh things should be more efficient,” because we were complaining about how slow things were and how no one was around. Anyway that’s a Dave and Buster problem.

I thought, “You know what? Things are too efficient. Things are too easy. We’re flattening everything out by numbers and MBAs and all these things.” This sort of goes into some of my general themes about how sport is not supposed to be efficient and life isn’t supposed to be efficient.

It came down to this final hypothesis, or lamenting, not nostalgia in a way but a truth around certain things that I think about: the things are not the things. The events you go to are not what’s important. They can be but not always. The things that we’re losing in life, that we’re missing out on, that our community is dying from, are everything in between.

What do I mean by that? I mean it’s not the club you went to. It’s the journey home with friends. It’s not the time you called the girl. It’s all the time standing around waiting for her. It’s the moments in between. It’s the time waiting. It’s the standing in line before the concert. It’s the months waiting in line overnight to buy the tickets for the show.

Everything that happens in between life is what we’re missing. Those are the things that we view as, “Oh that’s boring. Oh why do I have to stand in line? Oh why do I have to wait for this?” The anticipation, the buildup of everything is life. Like going to the store to buy things even though you don’t know what you’re going to buy. Window shopping, standing around at the mall, waiting for the bus, waiting for the car. The moments in life that bind you to your friends, that connect you to the parts of life that are interesting, are the boring parts.

I can’t tell you how many great great moments I had sitting on a train platform in New York City. The train just left and it’s 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and you’re like, “Oh my God, what are we going to do?” You sit on that train platform with your friends. You talk shit. You smoke a cigarette on a train platform and it’s those moments, traveling, being on the train, that make the sinews of community connect.

For instance we were talking about how our school fundraiser was at Dave and Buster’s and they’re getting 20% from this event. Yes they are. They could have just asked us for the money but instead they are connecting to community. They’re forcing parents to be together. They’re making these things connect. I think it was one of these things where a church community or a school or an event, someone who throws events or a party, is… there are easier ways. It’s not efficient but it’s the thing, right? It’s the sitting around. Yes the kids are playing games. Yes everyone is kind of doing stuff but everything in between is what matters. Waiting by phones, longing, longing for the concert to start that you bought a ticket for and you’re waiting. The parts of life that are interesting or that drive you or that bind you to your friends are the times that are not the thing. The thing is never the thing, which is what I’m sort of driving at.