SHATTERING LIFE LESSONS

Shattered Glass, Greensboro, NC

“Golf is about how well you accept, respond to and score with your misses, much more than it is a game of perfect shots.”  --Dr. Bob Rotella

Over the years I’ve read a couple of the books by sports psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella. I find that he has some pretty astute observations on the game of golf and life. I particularly like this quote because there are many things in life beyond our control except one thing—how we respond.  We fallible humanoids are anything but perfect and that understanding enables us to admit problems we have created, seek forgiveness, make things right and develop our character as we mature and move on in life.  Golf imitates life and neither are fair. Fair is where clowns, cotton candy and pig judging happen.

Passing by a shattered window a while back triggered a childhood memory of playing baseball with my dad.  He was pitching to me in our backyard and throwing some smoke to work on my developing strike out percentage.  Much to the surprise of both of us, I connected on a fast ball and sent it over our back fence and into our neighbor’s window!  I do believe my initial inclination upon hearing the shattering sound of breaking glass was to just get the heck out of there, while my dad just stood there in shocked amazement. Then he turned to me and calmly stated that we needed to walk over to the neighbors and confess. That seemed a bit too impetuous at the time, but he put his arm around my shoulder and we strode over and admitted our transgression. Then my dad offered to measure the windowpane and replace it for the neighbor.

Many years later, I was playing golf at the invitation of a corporate partner with a group at Pinehurst.  I was riding with a former associate that could hit the golf ball a country mile.  He wasn’t on the tour, however, as many of his drives sailed out of control.  As he teed off on a long par 5, we heard the sound of shattering glass on the horizon amongst the towering pine trees!  We probably could have scurried on down the fairway out of sight, but instead we drove into the pine trees to find a woman standing on her expansive front entry under a shattered transom window holding up a white golf ball.  Some women have likened childbirth to pushing a piano through a transom, but the size of this transom would have made for an easy delivery!  She wasn’t at all upset but remarked that they had lived in the home for years and this was the first time anybody had ever hit the house!  My playing partner immediately produced the company’s insurance information and we hurried on to our next shot

.

These life lessons reinforced the observation that you can never go wrong doing the right thing. That especially applies when something shatters your life and you need to step up to admit your role in a bad situation and work to fix it.   And God will work alongside us to bring good out of any bad situation. For example, our neighbor gave my baseball back to me and the woman gave back the golf ball!

SOUVENIRS

Shell Souvenirs, Kiawah Island, SC

I bet that you, like me, have collected more than a few souvenirs of our trips around the sun in our lifetime!  These tokens of remembrance are objects we acquire for the memories we associate with them.  Scholars have broadly classified souvenirs as markers of locations, pictorial images and symbolic natural items or mass-produced objects that can probably be purchased on-line at home.

I certainly like to take interesting and unique photographs of the world I’m traveling through at the time, both to record the journey and also to sharpen my focus on the place in time itself.  For instance, if I’m able to photograph a masterpiece painting, I will focus on only one section that catches my eye.  Some folks wouldn’t ever recognize that it was taken from such a recognizable work of art.  On trips into nature, I might gather up a small rock or shell as a remembrance.  Vandalizing an area is sadly all too common.  I remember walking up the Washington monument in DC and noticing all the remains of objects that had been torn from niches in the walls.  And watching a family encourage their child to pick colorful wild flowers close to a sign that read, “Take only memories, leave only footsteps” on a trail in a national park. 

But it isn’t just material things that we collect on our trips around the sun.  In the final analysis, it’s the relationships and lasting memories of good times that sustain us.  Unlike material souvenirs, these keepsakes do not change in importance over time.  They help to shape our character and their significance is priceless.  And only we can relate those souvenirs which we have retained in our possession over the years to our own personal experiences and the people we shared them with on our trips around the sun. 

CRUCIBLE CHARACTER MOMENTS

Potter's Kiln, Seagrove, NC
Radiant Crucible, Wrightsville Beach, NC

All of us are subject to the crucible of life at times which forms our character like a blacksmith’s crucible shapes and hardens iron to steel. The extreme heat of a potter's kiln transforms malleable clay into strong vessels. Some call this maturity. David Brooks writes in The Road to Character that there is one pattern that recurs on this road for people; “They had to go down to go up. They had to descend into the valley of humility to climb to the heights of character. The road to character often involves moments of moral crisis, confrontation, and recovery. When they were in a crucible moment, they suddenly had a greater ability to see their own nature. The everyday self-deceptions and illusions of self-mastery were shattered. They had to humble themselves in self-awareness if they had any hope of rising up transformed. Alice had to be small to enter Wonderland.”

I’ve also talked to people who have turned from praying to our creator because their requests never materialized. But we must be careful about our attitude of prayer. Not everything we ask for is provided or arrives on our time schedule. Asking to violate the natural laws of nature that God set in place or violating someone else’s free will doesn’t work either. And I’ve always liked the thought that we shouldn’t ask for an easy life, but rather a strong character.

THE HUMAN JOB DESCRIPTION

Journey, Blue Ridge Mountains, Blowing Rock, NC

The human job description is basically a call to grow our character on a lifelong spiritual journey.

A TOUCH OF FALL

Touch of Fall, Jamestown, NC

TRUE COLORS

Receding green chlorophyll begins to reveal true colors
at the tip of a lone Maple leaf.

It's been said that one's true character is revealed
when all those around withdraw leaving the person alone.

CHARTING THE STORMS

Ozark Storm, Lake of the Ozarks, MO

Life isn’t about randomly wandering about trying to find ourselves. It’s about purposely developing our character or soul in a way that would find favor with our creator; enabling us to maneuver through the storms of life so that we can continue to emerge on the other side while living a meaningful life.

OUR PERCEPTION OF CHANGE 2013

Thames River, London, England

As a trained Industrial Engineer, one of the primary functions in most of my job descriptions over a forty year business career was that of a change agent. It wasn’t long before I realized that most folks don’t want to move out of their comfort zones and will actively resist change. One of the classic reasons not to change is that “we’ve always done it that way ”—like continuing to make buggy whips after the world has moved on to automobiles. Or continuing to make full fashion women’s hosiery after the world had moved on to panty hose which indirectly created the outlet shopping malls of America, but that’s another story. I had the opportunity to change and observe human behavior for many years. It’s been said that the only constant in this world and life is change—both a paradoxical and eternal truth. Some of the best advice I ever learned was that since change is so inevitable, it’s best to resign yourself to embrace change rather than fight or resist it. That makes our life journey much more tolerable and interesting anyway.

So I found a recent study of 19,000 participants quite interesting when the published results concluded that people tend to picture themselves in the future much as they are today, discounting how they’ve changed over time. As an example, a twenty year old is generally unable to believe the appeal of a tattoo will wear off some day. Also, folks revealed that in ten years they would probably pay a premium price for tickets to a band they presently like versus much less for a band they liked ten years ago. That little exercise confirmed to the participants that they had indeed changed, but showed that they weren’t planning on as much change in the future!

I’ve always liked the Rick Warren definition of the primary human job description which is to grow our character. That inevitably involves a constant evolution, and sometimes a revolution, of change in our life--a change that we should welcome and nurture all of our lives. As we embark on another trip around the sun in 2013, it’s important to reflect on the notion that the sun never rises on the same world and you can never journey on the same river twice, for by then both you and the river have changed.