I drive home after work on the old highway. I could pop the freeway and get home faster, but I prefer the scenic route, which takes me past the cemetery, climbs up and kisses the mountains, then descends into town past the multi-colored storefronts jumbled together along main street. The plate glass windows in these rectangular brick structures make them look like oversized dioramas. They were once family-owned drug stores, furniture stores, theaters, and meat markets. Now they are mostly eclectic clothing retailers, who wanted these buildings for their “retro” vibe.
The highway continues past city hall and the new two-story library, past the grocery supermarket and the Walgreens, past the little Victorian houses that have been turned into thrift shops, and finally out of town until it ends at my house on the outskirts. My drive home is one more opportunity for me to seek beauty in the simple things of life.
As I was driving home on the highway the other night, I saw a billboard (there are many of them) of a female soccer player accompanied by the caption:
“Kicked her way to the top.”
This message was followed by the italicized inscription: “Passion.”
The person in the picture was Mia Hamm, who (as a casual U.S. soccer fan) I recognized right away. She’s famous. Wikipedia says Mia scored more international goals in her career than any other player, male or female, in the history of U.S. soccer. Mia also has more caps (a soccer noun meaning international match appearances) than any other female player in soccer history. In short, Mia is regarded as one of the greatest soccer players, if not the greatest player, in the history of U.S. soccer.
The explicit suggestion of the billboard is that Mia achieved greatness because of her passion for playing soccer. And I have no doubt that’s true. The implicit suggestion, however, is that I, the billboard reader, can similarly excel if I have equal passion.
I’m not sure. I am one who appreciates greatness. I try to surround myself with it. In my office, I have a framed print of the cover art from Abbey Road by the Beatles, IMHO the greatest band of all time. On the shelf above my desk, I have a red leather bound copy of the Lord of the Rings, tour de force of J.R.R. Tolkien, whom I consider to be one of the greatest authors of all time (though perhaps not the greatest, it’s difficult for me to give anyone that distinction).
On my shelf at home I have a box-set the Star Wars movies, which I consider to be the greatest films ever produced. I use a Lenovo laptop, an Apple iPad, and an Android smartphone, all of which I consider to be the greatest and best of their kind. There’s some element of satisfaction in seeing and using these objects, and recognizing the superlative achievements of their creators. It’s true, but sometimes hard to imagine, that human beings produced these things. Mere mortals are capable of greatness. And that greatness does not come without passion.
The problem comes when I consider this question: What about the normal people? I’m a normal person. Can normal people be great? Because, let’s face it, very few of us achieve what Mia Hamm, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Tolkien, George Lucas, and Steve Jobs did. And few of us would want to achieve it. Achievements like that frequently require a tremendous sacrifice of time, money, relationships and sanity that we wouldn’t be willing to give.
Nevertheless, I still want to be great at something. I’ve tried to be great at some things before. When I was in junior high school, I tried to be great at basketball. We had a driveway whose grade was not conducive to the installation of a basketball standard, so I became a basketball nomad in my neighborhood.
One of my favorite practice spots was a backboard that had been cemented into a rubber tire and sat upright in the cul-de-sac across the street from my house. I would start at my front door and dribble across the street to shoot baskets. It usually took a long time to get their, though, because each bounce of the ball had to be either between my legs or behind my back. If I lost control of the ball, or if the ball bounced somewhere besides between my legs or behind my back, I had to go back to the front door and start over. When I finally made it to the hoop and finished shooting baskets, I repeated the dribbling exercise back to the front door. It was hard, and in the beginning it often took hours to get across the street and back. But I got better, and after a while was able to handle a basketball like it was part of my body.
I wanted, more than anything, to make the school team. When basketball tryouts came around my seventh grade year, I felt like I was ready. This was the time when all of that hard work paid off. And at first, it looked like it would. I made the first cut. But that was as far as I got. I practiced more than ever, but in eighth grade I was cut after the first day.
I ninth grade, I thought I might have a better shot, since I now in a new school with new coaches to impress. I had continued my dedication to practicing. I made the first cut again, and I felt like this would be the year.
The second night of tryouts, we were asked to pair up with another tryer-outer and shoot free throws. Each of us was to take 20 shots, and then come back and report how many we had made. I paired up with my best friend (who had also made the first cut) and we gave it our best. He went first. He made 17 out of 20 for a respectable 85%.
Wanting to make the team so badly, nerves got to me and I missed my first four shots. I eventually ended up making 13 out of 20, for a dismal 65%.
I knew that the coaches were not going to want a player of my height (at the time about 5’9”, not tall enough to play center or even power forward) that was a 65% free throw shooter. So the obvious answer was to lie and say I had made more free throws. That was, I was sure, the only chance I had of making the cut. I wasn’t going to get greedy and say that I’d made every free throw, but 18/20 seemed like a believable number, so I was going to go with that.
I walked up to the assistant coach to report my (fake) results. I waited my turn. I spoke. I had “18” halfway out of my mouth, but at the last second I bit down, pulled it back, and mumbled “13.”. I don’t whether it was because some higher power was watching over me, or because my conscience was screaming, or because my best friend was standing there, or what. But I didn’t tell the lie. And I didn’t make the cut. That was my last year trying out for the basketball team.
And so it has gone. Later in high school I tried to be great at ballroom dance. I took lessons, participated on formation teams, danced in national competitions, and traveled the western U.S. putting on shows. But, in the end, I was too poor to afford private lessons and expensive costumes. I never won a competition.
When I was in college I tried to be great at body building. I lifted weights three hours a day at 24 Hour Fitness for four years, paid for an expensive personal trainer, ate a six-meal-a-day diet and drank dozens of gallons of vomit-worthy chocolatish protein water. But in the end I was too embarrassed to go fake-baking or even take my shirt off. I never competed.
A few years ago I tried to be a great recording artist. I spent a year and about $8,000 that I didn’t have writing and recording a masterpiece, a rock opera based on the Harry Potter books. I wrote for eight months, composing melodies and connecting instrumental leitmotifs. After recording, I used six weeks of post-production to make sure that there wasn’t a single annoying sibilance anywhere in the entire two hour running time. But in the end I lacked the marketing chops to get the album any exposure. Only a handful of people have ever heard it.
What I’m trying to say is that I think I’m a passionate person, but my passion has never gotten me to greatness. I’ve tried to kick my way to the top many times, but have always been a few kicks shy of a kata (I studied kung fu as well, but my teacher died of a brain aneurysm in the middle of my training and that was the end of that). Why haven’t I been as successful as Mia?
What about the normal people like me? Does a lack of great success imply an abundance of total failure?
I know a lot of great people. My dad is one of them. He’s never achieved anything “great,” and if you ask him, he’d probably tell you that he was a failure as a father and a businessman. But he’s not.
Last November my family and I were about to be homeless. With two young kids we were yearning for more space than our two bedroom townhome and 100 square foot yard could provide, so we put our townhome up for sale. We hired a good realtor, created a listing on the MLS, priced to sell, and waited.
The house sat on the market for months. We had lots of showings, but no offers. When October came, we decided to take it off the market. For some reason, we didn’t.
Out of nowhere, in November we had a showing and an offer in one day. The offer was for our asking price, and we thought we’d be foolish not to take it.
There was one problem. My wife, a passionate aficionado of Victorian and Craftsman architecture, had been through every suitable house in the area. We had lose bidding wars for several of them (nicknamed the Dream House, the Boring House, the Yard House, and the Saxon House), but had lost each time. With the winter approaching and the market at an ebb, we had nowhere to go. And we had to be out of our townhome soon.
We lowered our standards in a fit of desperation and found a newer brick place. Although it wasn’t antique and had several problems (it was a foreclosure), the masonry exterior was very attractive and the interior rooms were well organized. Although it wasn’t what we wanted, we succumbed to the threat of homelessness and made an offer.
We had good credit, and hoped to close on the house immediately so that we could move in (the house was vacant) the day we moved out of our old place. But we ran into another hitch. The second-story wood deck on the back of the house was only half finished, and the bank’s inspector decided it wasn’t safe. The joists were warped, uneven, and not properly supported, and there was no railing. Our loan application tentatively denied pending deck repairs.
Repairing the deck was going to be difficult. We had planned on spending all of our money on the down payment for the house so that we could get a lower interest rate. We looked at our options, but it soon became clear that we would have to do the deck ourselves on the cheap. Which really meant that I would have to do it myself. I got nervous. I’m not the handiest guy in the world, and my love of home improvement projects is right up there with my love of law school exams. I didn’t have the first clue how to begin.
My dad came to the rescue. He went out, bought all of the materials, hired a local kid to help him, and went to work. After the first couple of days I joined him, and we worked for the rest of the week late into the nights. Even with his help, however, I had a dark feeling that we weren’t going to make it. The winter was about to set in, and we were moving slowly. As each day went by, the feeling of depression got heavier and heavier. We weren’t going to make it I thought.
On the last night before the house was the be re-inspected, we were working well after dark. It looked hopeless. I wanted to give up. My dad worked on.
About 10:30 p.m., I was removing a post I had installed incorrectly. I don’t know what I was thinking, because II was pulling as hard as I could on that 4x4 piece of redwood about six inches from my face. And then it came. I rammed it into my teeth about as hard as I could, nearly knocking myself out. I reached up and touched my mouth, and it felt like my upper lip was gone.
It was so dark that we couldn’t really tell how much damage I had done to my face, although I could feel quite a bit of blood coming from my mouth. There we were, it was nearly midnight, the deck wasn’t finished, the inspector was coming in the morning, and I was bleeding everywhere. Things looked and felt hopeless.
My dad was unfazed. He got back to work, and somehow we finished. At about 11:15 p.m. we got the last piece of wood on. I was sure that my soon-to-be neighbors would hate me forever for running power tools that late into the night. But the thing was done and we were going home.
The next day was the inspection, and we passed. My dad had sacrificed an entire week and a whole bunch of money, and didn’t get anything out of it for himself. He didn’t get any recognition for what he did, no awards, nothing worldly. But I will always remember and be grateful for him.
It’s late, and this post has gone on too long. The wet November snow is decorating the ground outside. I’ve just turned the gas fireplace off because I’m too hot. Tomorrow I’ll probably spend most of the day cleaning bathrooms and grocery shopping with my kids. Maybe, if the weather permits, I’ll have a little time to try and get some more of the Trex put down on the deck (a year later it’s still not done, but that’s another story) before the winter really sets in. I won’t have much time, if any, for myself.
But I will have time to take pictures of the mountains. I will have time to read “Ozma of Oz” to my 4-year-old daughter. I will have time to throw my 2-year-old son up into the air. I will have time to sit on the couch next to my wife and watch “American Pickers.” I will have time to prepare my Sunday School lesson. What else is there?
The highway continues past city hall and the new two-story library, past the grocery supermarket and the Walgreens, past the little Victorian houses that have been turned into thrift shops, and finally out of town until it ends at my house on the outskirts. My drive home is one more opportunity for me to seek beauty in the simple things of life.
As I was driving home on the highway the other night, I saw a billboard (there are many of them) of a female soccer player accompanied by the caption:
“Kicked her way to the top.”
This message was followed by the italicized inscription: “Passion.”
The person in the picture was Mia Hamm, who (as a casual U.S. soccer fan) I recognized right away. She’s famous. Wikipedia says Mia scored more international goals in her career than any other player, male or female, in the history of U.S. soccer. Mia also has more caps (a soccer noun meaning international match appearances) than any other female player in soccer history. In short, Mia is regarded as one of the greatest soccer players, if not the greatest player, in the history of U.S. soccer.
The explicit suggestion of the billboard is that Mia achieved greatness because of her passion for playing soccer. And I have no doubt that’s true. The implicit suggestion, however, is that I, the billboard reader, can similarly excel if I have equal passion.
I’m not sure. I am one who appreciates greatness. I try to surround myself with it. In my office, I have a framed print of the cover art from Abbey Road by the Beatles, IMHO the greatest band of all time. On the shelf above my desk, I have a red leather bound copy of the Lord of the Rings, tour de force of J.R.R. Tolkien, whom I consider to be one of the greatest authors of all time (though perhaps not the greatest, it’s difficult for me to give anyone that distinction).
On my shelf at home I have a box-set the Star Wars movies, which I consider to be the greatest films ever produced. I use a Lenovo laptop, an Apple iPad, and an Android smartphone, all of which I consider to be the greatest and best of their kind. There’s some element of satisfaction in seeing and using these objects, and recognizing the superlative achievements of their creators. It’s true, but sometimes hard to imagine, that human beings produced these things. Mere mortals are capable of greatness. And that greatness does not come without passion.
The problem comes when I consider this question: What about the normal people? I’m a normal person. Can normal people be great? Because, let’s face it, very few of us achieve what Mia Hamm, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Tolkien, George Lucas, and Steve Jobs did. And few of us would want to achieve it. Achievements like that frequently require a tremendous sacrifice of time, money, relationships and sanity that we wouldn’t be willing to give.
Nevertheless, I still want to be great at something. I’ve tried to be great at some things before. When I was in junior high school, I tried to be great at basketball. We had a driveway whose grade was not conducive to the installation of a basketball standard, so I became a basketball nomad in my neighborhood.
One of my favorite practice spots was a backboard that had been cemented into a rubber tire and sat upright in the cul-de-sac across the street from my house. I would start at my front door and dribble across the street to shoot baskets. It usually took a long time to get their, though, because each bounce of the ball had to be either between my legs or behind my back. If I lost control of the ball, or if the ball bounced somewhere besides between my legs or behind my back, I had to go back to the front door and start over. When I finally made it to the hoop and finished shooting baskets, I repeated the dribbling exercise back to the front door. It was hard, and in the beginning it often took hours to get across the street and back. But I got better, and after a while was able to handle a basketball like it was part of my body.
I wanted, more than anything, to make the school team. When basketball tryouts came around my seventh grade year, I felt like I was ready. This was the time when all of that hard work paid off. And at first, it looked like it would. I made the first cut. But that was as far as I got. I practiced more than ever, but in eighth grade I was cut after the first day.
I ninth grade, I thought I might have a better shot, since I now in a new school with new coaches to impress. I had continued my dedication to practicing. I made the first cut again, and I felt like this would be the year.
The second night of tryouts, we were asked to pair up with another tryer-outer and shoot free throws. Each of us was to take 20 shots, and then come back and report how many we had made. I paired up with my best friend (who had also made the first cut) and we gave it our best. He went first. He made 17 out of 20 for a respectable 85%.
Wanting to make the team so badly, nerves got to me and I missed my first four shots. I eventually ended up making 13 out of 20, for a dismal 65%.
I knew that the coaches were not going to want a player of my height (at the time about 5’9”, not tall enough to play center or even power forward) that was a 65% free throw shooter. So the obvious answer was to lie and say I had made more free throws. That was, I was sure, the only chance I had of making the cut. I wasn’t going to get greedy and say that I’d made every free throw, but 18/20 seemed like a believable number, so I was going to go with that.
I walked up to the assistant coach to report my (fake) results. I waited my turn. I spoke. I had “18” halfway out of my mouth, but at the last second I bit down, pulled it back, and mumbled “13.”. I don’t whether it was because some higher power was watching over me, or because my conscience was screaming, or because my best friend was standing there, or what. But I didn’t tell the lie. And I didn’t make the cut. That was my last year trying out for the basketball team.
And so it has gone. Later in high school I tried to be great at ballroom dance. I took lessons, participated on formation teams, danced in national competitions, and traveled the western U.S. putting on shows. But, in the end, I was too poor to afford private lessons and expensive costumes. I never won a competition.
When I was in college I tried to be great at body building. I lifted weights three hours a day at 24 Hour Fitness for four years, paid for an expensive personal trainer, ate a six-meal-a-day diet and drank dozens of gallons of vomit-worthy chocolatish protein water. But in the end I was too embarrassed to go fake-baking or even take my shirt off. I never competed.
A few years ago I tried to be a great recording artist. I spent a year and about $8,000 that I didn’t have writing and recording a masterpiece, a rock opera based on the Harry Potter books. I wrote for eight months, composing melodies and connecting instrumental leitmotifs. After recording, I used six weeks of post-production to make sure that there wasn’t a single annoying sibilance anywhere in the entire two hour running time. But in the end I lacked the marketing chops to get the album any exposure. Only a handful of people have ever heard it.
What I’m trying to say is that I think I’m a passionate person, but my passion has never gotten me to greatness. I’ve tried to kick my way to the top many times, but have always been a few kicks shy of a kata (I studied kung fu as well, but my teacher died of a brain aneurysm in the middle of my training and that was the end of that). Why haven’t I been as successful as Mia?
What about the normal people like me? Does a lack of great success imply an abundance of total failure?
I know a lot of great people. My dad is one of them. He’s never achieved anything “great,” and if you ask him, he’d probably tell you that he was a failure as a father and a businessman. But he’s not.
Last November my family and I were about to be homeless. With two young kids we were yearning for more space than our two bedroom townhome and 100 square foot yard could provide, so we put our townhome up for sale. We hired a good realtor, created a listing on the MLS, priced to sell, and waited.
The house sat on the market for months. We had lots of showings, but no offers. When October came, we decided to take it off the market. For some reason, we didn’t.
Out of nowhere, in November we had a showing and an offer in one day. The offer was for our asking price, and we thought we’d be foolish not to take it.
There was one problem. My wife, a passionate aficionado of Victorian and Craftsman architecture, had been through every suitable house in the area. We had lose bidding wars for several of them (nicknamed the Dream House, the Boring House, the Yard House, and the Saxon House), but had lost each time. With the winter approaching and the market at an ebb, we had nowhere to go. And we had to be out of our townhome soon.
We lowered our standards in a fit of desperation and found a newer brick place. Although it wasn’t antique and had several problems (it was a foreclosure), the masonry exterior was very attractive and the interior rooms were well organized. Although it wasn’t what we wanted, we succumbed to the threat of homelessness and made an offer.
We had good credit, and hoped to close on the house immediately so that we could move in (the house was vacant) the day we moved out of our old place. But we ran into another hitch. The second-story wood deck on the back of the house was only half finished, and the bank’s inspector decided it wasn’t safe. The joists were warped, uneven, and not properly supported, and there was no railing. Our loan application tentatively denied pending deck repairs.
Repairing the deck was going to be difficult. We had planned on spending all of our money on the down payment for the house so that we could get a lower interest rate. We looked at our options, but it soon became clear that we would have to do the deck ourselves on the cheap. Which really meant that I would have to do it myself. I got nervous. I’m not the handiest guy in the world, and my love of home improvement projects is right up there with my love of law school exams. I didn’t have the first clue how to begin.
My dad came to the rescue. He went out, bought all of the materials, hired a local kid to help him, and went to work. After the first couple of days I joined him, and we worked for the rest of the week late into the nights. Even with his help, however, I had a dark feeling that we weren’t going to make it. The winter was about to set in, and we were moving slowly. As each day went by, the feeling of depression got heavier and heavier. We weren’t going to make it I thought.
On the last night before the house was the be re-inspected, we were working well after dark. It looked hopeless. I wanted to give up. My dad worked on.
About 10:30 p.m., I was removing a post I had installed incorrectly. I don’t know what I was thinking, because II was pulling as hard as I could on that 4x4 piece of redwood about six inches from my face. And then it came. I rammed it into my teeth about as hard as I could, nearly knocking myself out. I reached up and touched my mouth, and it felt like my upper lip was gone.
It was so dark that we couldn’t really tell how much damage I had done to my face, although I could feel quite a bit of blood coming from my mouth. There we were, it was nearly midnight, the deck wasn’t finished, the inspector was coming in the morning, and I was bleeding everywhere. Things looked and felt hopeless.
My dad was unfazed. He got back to work, and somehow we finished. At about 11:15 p.m. we got the last piece of wood on. I was sure that my soon-to-be neighbors would hate me forever for running power tools that late into the night. But the thing was done and we were going home.
The next day was the inspection, and we passed. My dad had sacrificed an entire week and a whole bunch of money, and didn’t get anything out of it for himself. He didn’t get any recognition for what he did, no awards, nothing worldly. But I will always remember and be grateful for him.
It’s late, and this post has gone on too long. The wet November snow is decorating the ground outside. I’ve just turned the gas fireplace off because I’m too hot. Tomorrow I’ll probably spend most of the day cleaning bathrooms and grocery shopping with my kids. Maybe, if the weather permits, I’ll have a little time to try and get some more of the Trex put down on the deck (a year later it’s still not done, but that’s another story) before the winter really sets in. I won’t have much time, if any, for myself.
But I will have time to take pictures of the mountains. I will have time to read “Ozma of Oz” to my 4-year-old daughter. I will have time to throw my 2-year-old son up into the air. I will have time to sit on the couch next to my wife and watch “American Pickers.” I will have time to prepare my Sunday School lesson. What else is there?
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