“Your competition is not other people but the time you kill, the ill will you create, the knowledge you neglect to learn, the connections you fail to build, the health you sacrifice along the path, your inability to generate ideas, the people around you who don’t support and love your efforts, and whatever god you curse for your bad luck.” – James Altucher
“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” – Bertrand Russell.
"Because when you change the way you look things, the things that you look at change". Wayne Dyer.
It was not the first time I have run into this brick wall. Nor, I fear, will it be the last. As long as I can remember, or more accurately 1962, I can recall wondering about why I felt so positive about certain things, and ambivalent over others. True I didn’t know the full definition of the word ambivalent when I was ten, so let’s use the jargon I was familiar with at that time and just say I was confused.
The basic confusion over why I felt so drawn to sports and frustrated by math. Why I liked girls and not spelling. And very precisely, why I loved music but not homework.
This trend continued into the late 60’s when I was a high school baseball star and very average student. Being the difficult times that they were I was also caught up in the immoral war in Southeast Asia, Watergate, Woodstock, my beautiful cheerleader girlfriend, surfing, rock ’n roll and the ’65 Mustang that Grandma gave me for making it through four years of Catholic school with a diploma. There were drugs, booze and parties every weekend to tempt even the most dedicated among us. Trouble was a constant companion.
It was a few years later, my baseball career prematurely ended by a series of bad decisions, that the issue became something to consider, review and perhaps even make a personal course correction.
The issue was competition.
No longer being a slave to its demands, the going philosophical approach was that sustainability and cooperation was the enlightened and correct course. This made sense to me and I gratefully accepted the cosmic input, shouldered my backpack and headed down the dusty road. In search for whatever. I smiled a lot more, marveled at sunsets and decided to travel the world. Keroac, Allan Watts, Kesey and Lao Tsu as traveling companions.
Competition was dead. I was here to see, experience, interact, grow and sing. The only enemy was fear.
In 1974 I left LA in a 1948 Chevy 3/4 ton pickup carrying a wood and metal camper shell on its back that I had lovingly handcrafted. Me, my German Shepard Cassady, my cheap flattop acoustic guitar and my Grateful Dead songbook pointed ‘Henry’ towards Spokane, WA., destination the Worlds Fair.
Cassady and I made it, Henry did not.
Let’s fast forward. In whirl-wind, bullet-point, jump-cuts from Spokane, Brewster, Carlton, Fountain Valley, Bainbridge, Diego Garcia, Venice, France, Germany, Canary Islands, Hawaii, the UK, Australia, Canada and Mexico, Virgin Islands, the Eagle Tree RV park, to here. Today.
Many miles and many smiles. Along with some headaches and heartbreaks.
Between those geographic dots, overseas assignments, changes in latitudes, downsizing and upgrading, there came a moment when a long dormant emotional memory resurfaced.
I missed being a competitor. I missed the struggle, the work, the ethos, the failure and the subsequent redemption. I missed the grind, the soreness, the camaraderie, the moments of brilliance immediately following what seemed to be a humiliating end to civilization. I loved flying high in April and shot down in May. Mostly it seemed to me because that hinted at June through March being a relentless march back to flying high come spring. There was hope. There was a dream. A goal, a victory just over this horizon. I loved the risk. The challenge. The game. My part in something larger than my puny, pitiful self. It seemed to ask only one thing of me; my best. Not some estimate or partial charade, but the absolute apex of my combined effort, attitude, ability, presence, leadership and creative potential to improvise under duress. And, perhaps most importantly, my ability to inspire those same attributes in others.
God almighty, why had I denied this hard-wired trait in my personality for so long?
And following, what do I do with it now?
Stay tuned. We’ll go deeper tomorrow.
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