November 19^th, 2009

It’s been a month… A month that was a blessing.

Holy crap – now that I say it, I’m realizing that it was a month ago that I said “I think I’m finally getting over this flu” and then WHAM! the Universe saw an opportunity to sucker-punch me with a lesson to the mid-section.

Earlier this morning, I read a profile post on Facebook that got me thinking. A good friend of mine wrote, “great to see my buddy up and walking around at my son’s POP Warner football game” (which they won 27-0 so good work Lucas) but what made me think was my response: “Now to work on running as fast as those kids!” I realized, that was something I could do a month ago today. What got me thinking was, is that really what is motivating me right now?

When we are kids we are so carefree. We can run and play all day without worry. We can make mistakes without heavy consequences. That’s what we are supposed to do. That’s how we learn at that age. The other thing that occurred to me was that maybe running that fast isn’t what I am supposed to be doing right now? Maybe what I needed was to slow down and to learn some lessons and take a different, more purposeful or meaningful look at whom I am, who I want to be and where I am headed. There is the chance that I would find I was happy with the current me and that would be fine. At least I stopped to check in. Potentially, I’ll find I am not on the “right track”. Maybe I need to identify the problem areas and find a back-road to get me closer to where I would rather be. I suppose that this is what I am doing right now and this blog is part of that process. Thanks for hearing me out. I’m learning as I go.

As I look back on my childhood, I feel that I made many of my mistakes because I was going too fast and didn’t stop to think. I didn’t make a habit of slowing down to make good decisions. I was always on the go –

• · racing out the door to school – forgot my lunch - went hungry or had to borrow... again
• · racing in from playing – got to run to hockey – race out the door – forgot my stick or skates
• · caught up in verbal sparring at school – “won” – regretted what I said later - hurt someone's feelings
• · ripped through my homework so I could go out and play – did a spotty job - bad grade - disappointed

I suppose that we have so much to learn that we can only learn so much at any one time! At that age some of the lessons have to be put off until later. We have to amass the experience in life to really see how some of the lessons apply before we can ever be in the correct frame of mind to make another step forward.

As for the slowing down a bit part: I remember realizing through my sports that as some of the older guys that I played with got slower, they seemed to play better! How could that be?! Faster is better right? Stronger is always better right? I guess not or those old farts couldn’t possibly be getting better? P.S. Old lacrosse farts – no disrespect, apparently I am one of you now! What I realized is that they were slowing down but that gave them the ability to stay present, think things through and make better decisions. They would recognize the benefits of good decisions but they’d also learned to avoid the pain of making bad decisions on the ice or the turf.

This week’s goal: Make an updated “life mission statement” that outlines who I want to be and then start to work backwards from there. Treat myself like a business plan and put the time into the details just like I would if I were hoping to start a new successful business. I plan to slow down and think this one through because if it were a business and I did a half-ass job, ignoring the details, would I really expect it to be a success?

Embracing being an old(er) fart that makes better plays,

JM