I would have to think of what I did before responding to this prompt.
To me, for play or fun, aren’t things specifically set aside as such. I need to find my way back to PF for the playtime there on the bike and weight machines. It is fun to coach basketball for Special Olympics, and following the holidays, I can wind my way back to take in some off-season lifting sessions with the T-wolves as they prepare for the ’26 campaign.
Christmas shopping is fun to me. When the bills come due, it can be an altogether different and harrowing experience. But the joy in it outweighs the short term debt.
I guess when it comes to play time or fun, I don’t necessarily stipulate and cordon them off as such. Too much anticipation and expectation if you ask me. If anything goes south, in the least bit, then what was the point? Those are not boundaries I want to instill or live by.
Play time can be shooting the breeze getting coffee or at the checkout picking up your five favorite grocery items. (Oops! forgot that one yesterday.) Fun is calling an old buddy, connecting with the kids. Watching the finches hop around the seed left on the ground and watching Mr. Squirrel trying to figure out how to access the suet now that it has been moved to a bird only access point.
So play and fun are to be had everywhere and all of the time. If you can be open to letting things be and finding it in every available moment.
Thanks for the opportunity to play around with some thoughts, words, punctuation and sentences today!
The various fonts of my ongoing amateur authorship affinity has carried with them a number of different monikers. Most of which were football or coaching affiliated and oriented.
One, once began some time ago, “…a temporary assignment” was somewhat a center of my attention, evocative of that moment in my life. A period of an altogether different level of processing and being. Unaware, or perhaps more honestly unprepared for the feces that would soon hit the fan. Directed for the most part by my inept, irrational and mostly intentional thoughts, words and actions.
So much for leading by example. But I digress….
As of late, things have been brought into focus. Not back into, for that would imply the way things were then needed to be better seen so as to promote my immediate return to them. I would hazard to say that focus has never been one of my strong suits. Well, perhaps it appeared as such, albeit superficially.
Perhaps.
Maybe that remains to be seen.
Of late, things are different. Largely because the direction of my gaze has changed. No longer am I trying to re-see where I was currently looking. Mostly behind. I think I better understand its relevance to this moment, but it no longer rules the day. Same can be said for what may or may not lay ahead. Though we may think other wise, there isn’t much say in that department.
Which this morning led me to better grasp “….my temporary assignment.” No where close to the first or second iteration. Hopefully what is said about the third time has merit and veracity.
Today is what I have. And what I choose to do with it is an assignment of the utmost importance. Tasks that have been granted by a grace freely given. Delivered by the thoughts now received, the words readily heard and the actions witnessed.
Nothing to do with bringing things back into focus. Just being able to finally really see.
Well, my stage career began and ended with Mr. Tantillo’s 7th & 8th grade Barbershop Music classes at the Hinsdale Junior High School, about 1972 or 3 BC. I had the fortune of singing lead in a quartet that travelled as far as Milwaukee, to share “My Wild Irish Rose” when our turn came up during the program.
Heading out on that proverbial limb, I think it was Russ that sang bass, Mike that was our baritone, and the tenor’s name? Escapes me for now. But when I remember it at 1:43 AM, I will add it in. We usually concluded our concerts with “Good-bye My Coney Island Baby”. Upon retirement when I graduated from junior high, my singing moments were reserved for “Rosalita” in college and are now preserved in the friendly confines of my car with my friends at WXRT or the Drive.
However, since then, I have also been blessed with opportunities to create some of my own melodies in public speaking around the community. My involvement in football as a player and now a coach has afforded me chances to speak to players whether on the field at practice or at other events, share my thoughts with the staff, players and families at weekly high school team dinners and teach coaching concepts at football clinics around the state.
I also became a guest lecturer at a near by college and through my involvement as a mentor for the local Boy Scout troops, provide the earned accolades for soaring as an Eagle at their court of honor. Of late, I have had the chance to share a daily devotional with my new team and explore the spiritual essence of other readings with another close coaching friend of mine.
These daily prompts are such a treasure. They reveal things to me I just did not even consider.
Singing was scary to start. Being out in front of many with three others carrying a tune. But now that I look back, it was a sorely needed source of joy for a young man that pretty much kept to himself. Since some arbitrary test I took in grade school disqualified me from learning an instrument, having the opportunity to just sing was a Godsend. A way to express a passion I had for music. Apart from laying on the living room floor next to the RCA console, reading liner notes and playing records at “11”. Not sure what led me to neglect that path once I went into highschool. Maybe it was football that took front and center.
So the melody I have been able to share in public speaking shares the same source of passion. To articulate feelings, sensations and hopes through words. Not telling anyone what to do or how to do it. But moreso what is to be gained if you surrender yourself to that undertaking without regret. The memories it will create within those moments and for the rest of your life. How fulfilling just leaving it all out there, regardless of the outcome, can be. And is.
And when you can connect with another or others within a sea of faces and lives, you just know it.
The eye contact. The body language. The expression. You sense their presence in your melody. And within you. A feeling of connection and intimacy that just escapes description.
Exactly why you just need to leave it all out there, surrender and dismiss the possibility of regret.
One of the most influential mentors in my life is Pastor Ellsworth Freyer. “PF” to those close to him. “Coach” to me. I was blessed to be one of many he coached throughout his life as a man of the cloth. He coached me to coach. To mentor. Serve others. And write.
When I would run into writer’s block penning some words of encouragement to those I served, he would reach out and share some of his words of wisdom. The most inspiring were found in his motivational pieces, he called “Power Thoughts”. Aptly named. I happened upon this one tonight (in 2017):
“One of the most sobering thoughts I have ever been confronted with is this: ‘What you are someday going to be, you are now becoming.’
Right at this very moment in time, you are exactly what you have been in the process of becoming – all your life.
So? Are you the person you dreamed of becoming?
How close are you to becoming the type of person you want to be?
Even right now, you are in the process of becoming the person you will be in an hour. In a day. Next month. The coming year. In two, five or in a decade.
And the habits? Those you have now – and will begin to acquire and accumulate – determine the person you will eventually, someday, become.
If you are not now doing the things that you need to do, to become what you want to be, what makes you believe that you ever will?
What is preventing you from becoming that person? The one you want to become?
It is incumbent upon you to choose to begin now.
Situations or circumstances should never determine the when, if or how you begin.
So?
Just begin. And begin right now.
For what you are now becoming, is what you will someday be.”
In a conversation at work some time ago, the phrase “location, location, location” came into play.
Nothing to do with its inherent real estate connotation. But more so how one maintains a sense of presence in the real estate they happen to occupy in this moment. Not just where they find themselves. But more to the point, how they find themselves where they are now. Not in a week, month or year.
Now.
‘Cause when it comes down to it, if you aren’t here, then you cannot access what is to be gained from the moment. Not that each moment is going to be an epiphany. That is never the case. It is just that each moment has within it the capacity to become an epiphany.
A surprise. Never expected. Life changin’.
An epiphany.
It seems to me that there is a human tendency to believe that moments that seem a mistake, reflect a poor decision or turn out to be a failure are lost causes. A chance lost. Something not meant to be. Better left behind than kept, discerned and understood.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Everything we encounter in our lives has meaning. A purpose. A reason to be. And yet because things are not precisely what we imagined, we think all is lost. Wasted effort, commitment and direction.
We choose to leave the moment and place ourselves where we wish to be. A place begotten without the sacrifice, effort, discipline and effort. Then when we awake, and find ourselves at what seems to be the ultimate conclusion, we deflect, ignore, blame and avoid the outcome.
“Location, location location” has nothing to do with where you are. It has everything to do with being fully present where you are right here, right now. So that you can someday, become all that you were meant to be.
If you have the presence of mind and soul to capture and keep those multiple instances of missteps, defeat and failure, then you can access the wherewithal to maintain a presence in those moments yet to come.
