Happy New Year, 2010! - family is important

Happy New Year, 2010! It's a new decade and even though it wasn't rung in by watching Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, or New Year's Eve Times Square Live, or drooling over Jennifer Lopez' New Year's outfit, or watching Dick Clark's show with Ryan Seacrest and the live ball drop, or even catch the New Year Countdown online or Adam Lambert, or catch-up on Rush Limbaugh, I did get to spend it with family and we didn't make predictions for 2010.

For me it started with the spiritually impossible situation of not being able to get out of O'Hare Airport to San Francisco. The last United Airlines' flight I was listed for had an unbelievable 108 standbys. The United 767 used only held about 160 people. I was standby passenger number 52, and even though I've been in such a situation before and made it on board, it wasn't happening this time.

So I wound up talking with my Mom and a family friend until 3 AM CST here in my hometown of Chicago. And during that time we watched a movie I stumbled upon and always wanted to see: The Ice Storm. Not to digress, but it's an excellent movie that deals with family communication, or lack thereof .

At the end of it, FOX Entertainment CEO Tom Rothman, who hosts the show around which Fox movies were presented last night, obvered that The Ice Storm was about how we try to escape our family, only to have circumstances bring us back to our family.

That was wild.

I sat in total amazement. I've always believed in God, but never more so than last night because not only did that whole flight fiasco bring me to my small family, but talking about how things have changed was a great and necessary way to really take stock of how things have changed. Especially with so many people I've known who died in 2009.

Here I was worrying about meeting friends at the Balboa Cafe and whatever fun I would miss, and I was slammed into this very necessary event. In other words, having been with my family, I was seeking escape with the idea that I was headed toward something "more fun", and all the way missed what family was about. Not any more.

Our families know who we are and accept us, period. They don't have to be blood relations, just people who really truly love you without condition. And those people are there before you, but in the quest to be cool, all of us miss (and mistreat) those who really do care about us. In doing that, we lose the part of ourselves that sometimes we need to find just to successfully carry on.

So I've learned a lesson I'm passing on. Well, let's say I got a refresher course. Family is important to me, but frankly I saw it as a burden at times. It's not. It's freedom and love.

2010 predictions comes later!