Get in the game!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since football season has returned at its regular time and slot in our collective lives, it struck me why so many are excited  for the new season.

I don’t think it has anything to do with winning or losing at Fantasy Football. I do think it has a lot to do with being distracted from our daily lives. But more importantly, that we have a fantasy for us to look forward to.

Believe it or not, I actually do look forward to my Kentucky football team’s new season.

In a sense, I know what it feels like to be a CUB fan.

But as the saying goes in Lexington, “ah, but basketball season is coming, CATS, CATS, CATS!” (Sorry football team, no disrespect, but I will always cheer for you, but I am rational enough to realize every other SEC team needs a homecoming team on the schedule.)

For me, I feel much happier when I have a goal to achieve, if I am writing something, a novel, in truth, I have already written the last sentence. My mission then becomes, “how do I get to that ending?”

That simple question is what motivates me to wake up at 4 in the morning to write for 3 hours. Typically, it’s whisper quiet outside, and all I can hear is the house air-conditioning units cycle on and off. After about 7ish, then I’ll go tackle my day-time career, a career that I do enjoy because I love the challenge to interact in the modern healthcare business, but in truth, it’s not my passion.

I never want to feel content, I prefer that I burn-up from re-entry from a raging internal fire. I want this carbon based vessel to voyage great and far, but eventually I know it will disappear into the atmosphere.

If you’re like me, and fortunate enough to have over 50 growth-rings within your skin bark, I am quite aware of the reality that I approach closer to being a past-tense, a memory for the living.

If someone takes a core sample from me after I reach room temperature, I wonder what story the patterns will tell?

After, I know there will be an intense fire, and I’ll go all, “ashes to ashes, funk to funky” thank you David Bowie, and my friends and family will know, thankfully I was never a junky.

But I wondered this morning, gazing at that picture of me from a time when LBJ was president, what advice would I provide to that little boy?

Number 1 – “Get in the GAME! If you get knocked down, get back up, and get back in the game.”

(I’ll let you add or create whatever metaphor or saying attributed to Knute Rockne, or Abraham Lincoln, or Mother Teresa that you think might work into this interstellar scenario.)

But for me, I would share these sentences from Henry James’ notebooks. He was a famous author, you can Wiki him, but it’s what he wrote that I read, almost every day, the thought Is the fuel that stokes my caldron.

“The way to do it – to affirm one’s self sur la fin – is to strike as many notes, deep, full and rapid, as one can. All life is – at my age, with all one’s artistic soul the record of it – in one’s pocket, as it were. Go on, my boy, and strike hard…. Try everything, do everything, render everything – be an artist, be distinguished to the last.” ~ Henry James.

Well, I look forward to another football season in my life, and I will faithfully cheer for my Cats. And I will hope not to come in last place in Fantasy Football.  But if I do, I’ll try again next season.

NS

PS ~ Feel free to share this post, I’m sure you know someone that might need Henry’s advice.