By: Mike Carter Follow me on Twitter account for more baseball content.
Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer here in the Unites States. Pools open up, the grills are loaded and ready, the yells of kids playing in the yards permeates the air around us. If you’re anything like me, you have a mountain of yardwork that never ends while trying to balance baseball practice, cello lessons, low tire pressure, cleaning filthy garbage cans, and managing work. Always the work.
It’s also usually right around the quarter pole of the baseball season, where we start to separate the contenders from the pretenders. I am a White Sox fan, and it was a horrible April for my beloved nine. They have showed some signs of life in May with a 14-9 record as we head into the final weekend of the month. I am prepared for the usual White Sox trend: play well, then play poorly, finish with about 82 wins, and then proclaim that next year will be the year. It likely won’t be.
But the important part of Memorial Day isn’t the pool openings, or the barbecues, or the piercing screams of children having fun. Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day and began after the Civil War here as a way to remember the soldiers who gave their lives so that we may continue to live with freedom and maintain our lifestyle. As we prep for our outings with friends and family this weekend, please take a moment to reflect on why we have this vacation day Monday and be grateful to those who paid for our freedom and lifestyle here. It’s my firm belief that we all need to practice humble gratitude far more often than we do in our lives.
I live in a small town about 40 miles west of Chicago called Batavia. As of last month, I have lived here longer than any other place I have lived in my nearly 50 years on the planet. It’s been a terrible week here: a pillar of our community and a friend to all was struck by a car this week and killed while riding her bike. A day later there was a car chase that ended in gunfire less than a mile from my home; the driver was killed by local police after a brief shootout that resulted in the loss of a K-9 named Hudson. I don’t point to these things as all that unusual in today’s day and age. I have written before that most pain is local, meaning, unless it happens to you in some way, maybe you don’t experience it as something that really hits home. Think of mass shootings: we have accepted that we will have weekly killings in this country and have done nothing to stop that. But unless a mass shooting happens in a neighborhood near you, maybe it doesn’t hit you the same way. We see it, shake our heads and get on with the business of the day. It doesn’t mean you don’t care; it just means that we’ve become almost numb to it.
The events of this week got me to thinking more deeply about life and the time we have here. It is finite, and we never know what waits around the corner to meet us.
My favorite movie of all time is “The Shawshank Redemption.” As Andy is talking to Red near the climax of the movie, he utters, “get busy living or get busy dying.” It’s always resonated with me, but especially now as I have gotten older and hopefully, a little bit wiser. It’s a great reminder that if you are not doing the things you love on a daily basis, all you are doing is lighting the way to dusty death, as Shakespeare wrote in “Macbeth.”
This weekend I would like to encourage you to take stock of your life. Are you doing the things you want to be doing with the limited time you have here? Are you spending time on the right things? The fact is that none of us have this figured out. As the author Mark Manson has said, it’s all just a best guess. Can we stop putting pressure on ourselves to be perfect, and just learn to live with some humility, gratitude and maybe even, sometimes, a little grace? I see people all around me, me included, trying to make more money, get a better home or car, or buy things that make them happy. Things aren’t going to make us happy. Buying that new car or truck will make you happy to an extent, but in six months, it’s just your car. It’s just a thing you acquired.
We have to learn to quiet our internal fears and anxieties, and take life as it comes at us. Spend time doing the things you love: walking, connecting with our loved ones, getting outside in nature, reading a book, coaching a baseball team, knitting, drinking coffee alone on your front porch, watching terrible movies on the Hallmark channel, going to your church, being out in your community of people, driving the car with the top. Whatever it is, a common phrase my students say often is “you do you.”
If you throw a tether out to the world, I promise you there is someone out there who will grab it and hold on to it. Try. Connect. We are wired for it. Thanks to an old friend who taught me that years ago. All of this is a grand experiment that we can keep trying daily in our allotted three score and ten that we get on this planet. Do not be afraid or anxious. It’s not worth your time. It’s going to be ok, and so are you.
Life has a way of figuring things out for us, despite our best efforts to control everything in our grasp. We are not in control. Life is. What we need to do is enjoy the little moments listed above, and hundreds of others, while we get through each day. Our friend who was killed this week didn’t know that her time was coming to an end here, but she had prepared herself through the way she lived her life that when she left, she had accomplished so much in far too short of a time. A woman of faith, with five children, a husband, and friend to many, she leaves behind a legacy that will be remembered forever by those who knew her. Those police officers who had to respond to an unimaginable situation this week in our small town’s streets: they did what their training taught them to do, and they protected this community, and we are grateful for them. They had no way of knowing how the day would go. None of us do with any certainty.
My father-in-law Dennis Walsh died 16 years ago today. He was a police officer for over 30 years and one of the funniest, smartest and wittiest people I ever had the pleasure of knowing in my life. Stricken with cancer, we went to visit him and my mother-in-law in Florida about two months before he died. They spent winters in a lovely town called New Smyrna Beach, right on the Atlantic Ocean. His time was waning. My daughter Ellie was an infant. I will never forget this scene: as I was trying to get Ellie to nap on the beach, an exercise in futility, he pulled out a kite and started flying it on the beach, drinking his fake beer. A man in his 60s, dying of cancer, with a huge grin on his face (a Cheshire cat grin, surely), flying a kite on the beach, relishing and enjoying his time. He never hid from it. He just went ahead and got busy living instead of getting busy dying.
My point is, if we are prepared for anything, and live our lives with kindness, grace and compassion, and reflect often on what we are doing and who we are doing these things with, and if we can take unadulterated joy in the little moments peppered throughout our day, we will have lived. Take a moment this weekend to consider what brings you joy, do more of that, and work on being kinder, gentler and compassionate not only to a world that constantly seems to be losing its mind, but to yourselves as well. Remember those who have served and died to give us the ability to live our lives and ponder these existential questions as I am this week.
Go fly a kite. Grab a beer and a hot dog. Watch a ballgame. Drive with the top-down listening to the radio. Read with your coffee or tea. Laugh at that barbecue. Hell, laugh at yourself. But go live and be kind, compassionate and grateful to those around you, and yourself. This is the best thing you can do as you ruminate over your team’s place in the standings.
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