Fix the Furniture

This is part two.

Yesterday you might recall was all about dealing with the impossible. Or, better perhaps, the seemingly impossible. This for the simple fact that very few things actually are impossible, we however, establish many very doable things as completely out of our humble reach. And therefore create the impossible. What a marvelous oxymoron! Out of fear, ignorance or propaganda (somebody said it couldn’t be done) we accept the impossible as just that and meekly go about the business of being cowering lemmings and consumers of goods and services. I say this with compassionate rancor. 

If ever there was a day when this practice, writing as introspection, is therapeutic, that day is today. 

My team got the snot kicked out of them. On TV for all the world to see. We were humiliated, insulted, bullied and buried in a pathetic display of ineptitude. Of all the reasons I carefully listed yesterday in the attempt to define the steps and actions necessary to face the fire breathing dragon and walk away feeling victorious - as compared to being victorious - every one of them was ignored. But wait - there’s more bad news. 

I am just as guilty. I dished out a semi-legal dosage of medicine to them but partook of a completely different one. I sat and watched. True, I felt their pain as time after time a fractional distance, a blink of the eye or the slightest detectable space kept them from success of both the immediate and overall. When all was over, when all the mistakes, all the opportunities and all those incredibly small details were added together, we were faced with the reality that we didn’t get the right bounces at the right times, itself an admission of omission.  If we had done the things necessary to avoid getting in to those situations is the first place we wouldn’t be talking about the issue of football karma. I once played with a guy who liked to say that the only kind of luck in football is bad luck. Frank made sure that meant for the other team. He was the luck, translated as effort, hard work, attitude and a fearless approach to every movement on the field. You want better luck? Practice more. 

I also stand guilty as charged as a result of my response to the game as it was being played out. One might say that yesterday’s post was an exercise in preparation. I was preparing for the worst, trying to create a soft landing space should the expected come to painful fruition. It did and I didn’t. Sometimes when you get a glimpse, a tease, of what could happen, and that quick glimmer of hope is dashed and trashed moments later, it makes the result even harsher and harder to swallow. As much as I tried to be a level headed and unbiased neutral observer and unemotionally watch two college football teams play a territorial game of keep-away, I got caught up in the emotion by about the second play from scrimmage. 

We had it! And we gave it away.

It is not the first time in the history of college athletics that this has happened. It is one of the many reasons why we (sorry to include you) are so drawn to this drama. It is life and death, the very reason we exist. I recognize the absolute silliness of that statement in the larger global context. Still I follow the roller-coaster arc of my team as if every player was my kid and we represented all that is good in the world in a game against all that is bad. I have been unsuccessfully trying to wean off of this for almost fifty years now, but as as you may have deduced, the battle rages on every autumnal Saturday.

We go back to the drawing board, renew our commitments and take it from the top. The world still spins on its axis and we have myriad issues with which to address. There exists an opportunity for improvement and growth that is possible only because of the events that took place yesterday. As predicted, everything has changed. Today is the solution. Let us find the courage to rise from where we have fallen, access the damage, and move onward. 

And fix the broken furniture.