What will your verse be?

On the recommendation of my roommate I just watched Dead Poets Society.  Great movie, LtP strongly suggests that everybody watches it at some point in the next few hours.

I'm a sucker for movies about nonconformity, especially for ones with Robin Williams, so this hit home pretty good.  Definitely a good use of two hours.

Robin Williams is an English teacher in Dead Poets Society.  His main message for his students is be their own people, to not do things simply to do things.  That everything should have a personal motivation behind it and should be a point of personal pride when it's done.

There's a big difference between personal pride and being recognized for accomplishing something.  Last week I talked about "Scott," who basically based all decisions off of what would make him look the best.  Sure this is cool.  Everybody wants to be seen as successful.  There are very few people who honestly don't care at all what other people think and do 100% what they want, and those people are psychopathic serial killers.

And have seriously creepy eyes

Personal pride comes from doing something that we want to do, that we're intrinsically motivated to do.  That's why there's so much satisfaction.  Where does satisfaction come from if we're looking to get externally rewarded?  Would someone be happy with the fact that they plugged themselves into the system and then got spit out?  All you have to do is not be very daring and not screw anything up. 

I'm not impressed. 

Anyway, I believe that to gain that personal pride we have to be willing to make decisions that are, well, personal.  We have to be ourselves and see if people adjust instead of adjusting to what we think other people want us to be, to be a Howard Roark instead of a Peter Keating, if you will.

In the post about Scott I talked about how I knew one person that liked him.  That one person is going to be referred to as Rachel. 

I used to be a huge fan of Rachel.  Very nice, seemed caring, etc.  No reason not to like her.  Until I found out the reasons not to like her, namely that she has none of her own values or beliefs.  She's all about making other people like her.  It's like her life is one big Miss America interview session - don't be too extreme in either direction, don't take a firm stand, basically just try to stand there and not give people a reason not to like you.

This really works, until, well, it stops.  People start figuring out what you really stand for eventually, and if they can't figure it out it starts looking suspicious, especially when it's more "empty" than "mysterious and dreamy."  I've honestly known Rachel for over 18 months, and I can't tell you what she finds important.  She's the most wishy-washy person I have ever met.  She makes decisions solely so that other people like her, especially people who can give her something (see Scott).

This creates a strange paradox.  The more she does to get other people to like her, the fewer people like her.  I've talked to a few other people who have known her about as long as I have, and we're all going through the same thing.  We used to like her but now there's just no reason to.

I don't dislike Rachel, but I don't like her either.  I honestly don't care at all.  Is there anything worse?  I would rather have somebody have some sort of opinion on me, either positive or negative, than just honestly not care about me at all.  I have lost respect for Rachel to the point where I try to say things to her just to throw her off and see how she'll react.  Almost every time she gets pissed at me, but because she wants people to like her so badly she always turns around and isn't pissed within a few hours or in the worst case the next day.

Why?

In one of the first scenes of Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams' character says, "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."

Basically we can do anything we want.  We can live our lives as if life is a science, or we can live them as if it's a poem.  This doesn't mean that medicine, law, business, and engineering can't be approached poetically.  Albert Einstein wasn't a poet but he lived poetically.  Sir Richard Branson lives poetically.  We only have a few years to be.  To be alive, to be in this world.  Being is a gift.  Is it really worth sacrificing the first 60 years of life working as part of the machine so that we can enjoy the last 20 years of retirement when we could simply see the entire life as an opportunity.

Life is not a rare opportunity, it's not a unique opportunity, but it is a special opportunity, and we need to look at it that way.  At the end of the above quote, Williams' character asks his class, "What will your verse be?"


That's a pretty powerful way to look at life, but it's very true.  Very few people are not remembered for something by somebody, so we need to think about what our verse is going to be.  Scott's verse will probably have completely proper rhythm and structure, but will it mean anything?  Rachel's verse will be cute and everybody will probably like it at first, but will we find any depth in it?


Our lives, our being, should be something that we're proud of, something that we can look back at and say, "Yeah, that's what I wanted to do, even if it's not what other people valued." 


Our lives need to be lived consciously.  If we don't know who we are, how will anybody else have even a chance of figuring out who we are?  Our verse is the only thing that lives on about us.  Our verse is our legacy.  What will yours be?

Life

Life is like driving down the highway on a summer night at sunset: you can view it a bunch of different ways.  There are people who are bored out of their minds and sleep through it.  There are people who role up the windows and turn the music up and just focus on the road and the destination.  There are the people who complain about how tired they are and how much their butt hurts and how they're sick of driving

There are the people that look forward to the journey but love the trip just as much.  They roll down the windows and feel the wind blowing in their face and look around and see all the beauty in the world, even if it doesn't seem present at first.  The beautiful way that the sun goes down over the corn fields.  The beautiful way that the sun peeks around the clouds.  The way that the clouds look like they're painted onto the sky.  The way that the wind hits them in the face, and sometimes it makes them tear up, but it's worth it because it makes you feel so alive.  The way that in a world full of so much hustle and bustle and business, you can be perfectly alone.  Everything is driven by your own motivation.  Everything is your own choice.  You thrive through the sun in your eyes and the crappy roads.  You smile and shake it off and have been able to experience the most beautiful things in the world.  Everybody has the opportunity to see the beauty, but not enough people realize that they're passing through it.

Not enough people laugh.
Not enough people smile.
Not enough people are brave enough to cry.
Not enough people realize that they're surrounded by beauty.

These people look for things that look beautiful, instead of realizing that beauty can be drawn from anything - a tiny smile or a simple laugh or a kiss on the cheek or being able to go on a walk or even being in a fight, because the ability to argue is a beautiful thing in itself, the ability to communicate everything is so unique and so incredible.

Not enough people have joy in what they do. They look for joy to come to them from the outside, instead of realizing that they're always surrounded by it and it has to come from inside of them.

Life is a beautiful, personal thing.  People need to be selfish enough to allow themselves to enjoy it. 

If everyone were selfish the world would be perfect.  We would all be joyful.  We would all be perfectly happy with everyone else, and we would allow everyone else to be happy as well.  This is selfless: allowing others to be happy.  Sad people are selfless because they try to make other people feel bad for them by allowing others to change who they are, which is selfish.  They don’t want their own joy, they want others to feel bad for her.  If they were selfish, she would tell the world to leave them alone and let them be her own person, but instead, they make others feel worse because they complain about how other people ruin their life, whether or not these are audible complaints, they do come out – this is selfish.  They are making other people less joyful because they are too scared to find their own joy.

We can't control other people, but we can control ourselves, which means that everyone should control themselves.  We should do this by enjoying where we are in every single moment of our lives.

That's joy.

That's beauty.

It's about love

My parents are outstanding at what they do.  They're great people, and have done a great job instilling their great values in my brothers and me.  They always pushed us to do our best in school, and when we got bad grades they were always pretty genuinely disappointed in us.  I have a lot more experience in this category than either of my brothers, so I consider myself the resident expert.  Anyway, I always thought that they just wanted me to get good grades.  I was always pretty scared of bringing home bad report cards.  It was terrifying.

Then I realized that they weren't disappointed in me for getting bad grades.  They were disappointed in my lack of effort.  You see, if John and Jennifer stress one thing, it's going balls to the wall.  I don't remember them ever taking the easy way out, and if I ever did, there was hell to pay.  The two times that my dad has been most angry with me came after basketball games where I didn't play as hard as I could.  As long as I provided effort though, there was never anything but pride for me from them.  That's why I can't stand when people don't try things or if they back away after something goes wrong early.

There's a kid who is infamous at our Lady's fine university purely because of his record levels of douchebaggery.  We're going to call this fellow Scott.

I honestly saw him wearing the exact same outfit as the kid in the pink, and doing it seriously.

I know one person that likes Scott.  One.  As in, that's it.  Literally everybody else that I know who has interacted with Scott has nothing but animosity for him.  Anyway, Scott was in one of my classes, and it's definitely a very hard class.  On the first test, he didn't do as well as he'd hoped, and he decided to drop the class.  Not too uncommon, happens every day in college.  But, this dude already has an internship lined up with Goldman Sachs, the New York Yankees of jobs.  This was an econ class, which is extremely important if he's actually going to be an investment banker, and he decided against toughing it out because he wanted a 4.0 on the semester.  Let's review.  He already has a job for this year, this class would help him learn for his job, but he dropped it because it was hurting his GPA.  This is a serious problem.  Where's the motivation?  Where's the love for learning?  Where's the effort and the hard work?

He's obviously a smart kid, but instead of busting his butt and trying to earn the best grade he possibly can, he's copping out and making himself feel good about himself because of his 4.0.  This really bothers me.  Too many people want results.  Not enough people want to work to get there.  This would be like if Scott had been flown to within a half mile of the peak of a mountain, climbed the rest of the way, and then claimed that he had successfully climbed the mountain.

Bullshit.

The best things in the world are the things that we work to earn, the things that we put our passion into, the things that we love.  It's hard to love something that's placed into your lap, because there's no value to it.  The reason that everybody loves walk-ons is because they're there for the love.  They're not trying to use a college team to vault themselves into the pros.  They're not riding it out for scholarship money.  They know there's a good chance they'll never get playing time, but they love the game and the work is worth it, even if they never get to see the A+ results that they might want.

Someday they'll make a movie called "Tom"

I try to avoid doing things just because the results will benefit me at some point.  Sure I'll benefit from my Notre Dame degree, but I want to love the things that I learn along the way.  I want those to be worth it.  What's the use of a degree if you don't know what you did to get it?  I'm sure there are a lot of people at this school who are here because of the degree they'll get.  That bothers me.

"Why'd you want to come to Notre Dame?"
"Isn't it obvious?  For the girls."

I love this place.  If I didn't I wouldn't be here.  I love everything about it.  It's the greatest place in the world.  There's no place better.  I love it.  And being someplace that you love, doing something you love, being with people you love; these are the greatest feelings in the world.  If we go places to get things and don't enjoy the time we spend going there and being there, if we do things to get results and don't enjoy the actual act, if we meet people and use them just to get something out of them without really valuing them, we're really missing out.

People have asked me why I write this thing.  I love writing.  Writing is a release for me.  I'm really good at having a lot of thoughts, and this is a way to get them out.  It's a way to reassert my beliefs, to make a record of what I think is important, and while there are always certain people I think would find each post valuable, but I don't write because I think I know better than anybody.  I don't want to tell anybody how to live their life or what's important or what they should be doing.  I don't think I'm "holier than thou."  I just need a release. 

That's the other thing about hard work.  The more time we put into something, the more it becomes explicitly ours.  If we take the easy way out, what have we gained?  A meaningless reward?  Trophies and honors and awards mean nothing without the things that they're based off of.  Giving me an Oscar wouldn't make me a good actor, it would just give me a paperweight.  Giving Scott a 4.0 doesn't mean he's learned anything, it just means he knows how to work the system.  I'll take someone with a farmboy work ethic and a value for learning over somebody with good grades any day of the week.  It's not about results.  It's about love.  If results are good, that's just an added bonus.

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?" - Satchel Paige

I've been dreading today for probably the past two years.  I'm officially twenty, and while I could re-use jokes about beating teen pregnancy, I feel like this is a very dire situation.  "Not So" Young William is seriously concerned.

I'm pretty sure that I lived only three days as a child, but kept repeating them over and over and over and over.  The first consisted of going to the beach with my cousins in the summer, playing Running Bases, building canals in the sand that would always absorb the water before it would actually make it back down to the lake, and acting as a diver for Stu's Rock Store.  The second involved playing 3 innings of tennis ball baseball for the Lakewood Vultures, which always involved an incredible 3rd Inning comeback, going to The Freeze for Ice Cream afterward (except for when I went through my slushie phase.  Why would you ever choose a slushie when you could get a swirl cone?  That's the dumbest thing ever, Young William.  A slushie is just cold juice with small ice cubes.  Soft-serve swirl is heavenly), and then racing (and losing) to Michael on the bike ride home.  The third involved going to school, hanging out with my mom while watching Arthur and Magic School Bus, and then playing for the Lakewood Fighting Egyptians in basement basketball.  Pure domination, mostly because the other team's center had to carry a two year-old Stuart in one arm who would consistently pass the ball to the Egyptians.

Anyway, those were absolutely, positively more fun than reading 50 pages of textbooks every night.  I promise.  I didn't have to worry about employment, I didn't have to worry about school, I didn't have to do anything but focus on my dual-sport athletic career.

But.

Apparently you have to get older (dumb rule).

I've covered childhood fairly extensively before, so I'll try to avoid repeating myself any more than I already have.  As Ben Folds says so eloquently, "Everybody knows it sucks to grow up, but everybody does."  So apparently I have to suck it up and move on.

I've been haunted by this picture for quite some time:

I mean, that's great and all.  Absolutely wonderful.  But does that mean that I have to leave it?  Does that mean that I have to leave my magic, my joy, my childhood in order to give it to my daughter (who looks suspiciously like a blond Susie Derkins)?  I don't think so.  I'm not planning on being an overly controlling father who makes up my own kid's make believe, but I don't see why I have to live in a separate world.  Instead of a hand-me-down, can't it be an introduction, an initiation to the club?

The background on my computer (every other day) is this:

This is much closer to my personal philosophy.  There's too much cool stuff in the world to just give up on pursuing it.  The thing I dislike the most about that first comic is the caption that describes Hobbes as a "childish thing."  I've always viewed Hobbes on a similar level as the bell from Polar Express.  For those who don't want it to be real, it's not, but for those who understand how real and beautiful and incredible it can be, it's the most real thing in the world.  Hobbes is more than a toy, but he's also more than a best friend.  He's Calvin's carefree, imaginative, joyous, clever inner drive.

Growing up is generally associated with ditching the Hobbes (Hobbeses?) of our lives, as is depicted in the first comic.  Why is this the way that it's "supposed" to work?  Why aren't more people encouraged to keep their creativity, their passion, their carefreeness?  Obviously we have to be responsible.  We have to pay mortgages, raise children, work, etc, but we can still seek out adventures.  We can still go exploring.

I recently stumbleuponed this quote from Roald Dahl, also a staple of my childhood. 


“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”


I was pretty depressed this afternoon and tonight.  I really felt awful.  I felt like it was the end of the ride.  When I started writing this I was planning on it being more reminiscent than anything.  Instead, I'm feeling a lot better.  It doesn't have to end.  I'm going to keep exploring.  I'm going to believe in magic.  I'm going to find magic.  It may be hidden, but the journey is 95% of the fun.  Especially when you bring your Hobbes.

Washed up

I recently came to the realization that I'm a nineteen year-old washed up athlete.  Bummer.  Considering that my life plan had always been to make the big leagues, this is a pretty disappointing situation.  Instead of being in hot pursuit of that goal, I have a bad knee, an iffy shoulder, my athletic prime is two years gone, and I take interhall football and pick-up basketball way too seriously.  Now, my vow to never become Papa Billingsley is getting tough to do.

Young William and son, circa 2040

Sports are a big part of life, and competitive sports are something that's really pretty hard to directly replace.  I'm currently trying to channel the energy that I used to put into sports into other things.  It's working fairly well; I'm can get excited about it, I still have that drive to be successful, but it's just not quite the same.  In sports, it's pretty much encouraged to try to hurt the opponent as a form of retaliation, but apparently that doesn't transfer to other aspects of life, as I found out when I tried to beat up our club sponsor when she forgot to reserve a room for a major meeting last semester.

I always loved baseball more than just about anything.  It's the only thing I ever wanted to do with my life.  Just swinging a bat or scooping up a ground ball or throwing batting practice or chasing down fly balls or pitching in the bullpen made me feel like there was nothing else in the world.  The diamond is the thinnest place I have.

Unfortunately, I can't play ball anymore.  It's tough to find enough guys to field a real game, and unlike other sports, pure athleticism doesn't really translate into much unless you have a skill set already, which is why pickup baseball doesn't have the same popularity as pickup football or basketball.  I'm not complaining.  I really don't think I'd ever want to play on an uncompetitive level now that I've reached the levels of competition that I have.  In basketball you can create your own competition.  Even if the defense is weak you can take tough shots.  In baseball, if the pitcher can't find the plate or puts meatballs over it, there really isn't much of a challenge.

I realize that it's kind of pathetic.  I understand that I have my whole life in front of me, but for a kid who was given a bat at the age of two, it's a hard habit to break.  I've played ball (I've been reminding myself this whole time to use past tense and it's just not working) since before I could put together a complete sentence, before I went to school, before I spent my first dollar, way before I earned my first dollar, before I touched a piano or a drumstick, before I knew Stuart, before I had ever talked to a girl that wasn't related to me, before anything.  It's been the one constant throughout my entire life.  In the winter I'd throw a tennis ball against our basement wall for hours and in the summer it was like one long game, inning after inning after wonderful inning.  I played for the Lakewood Vultures with Michael, and we had miraculous comebacks seemingly every night against my dad, who represented the Crystal Lake Cougars, the Turnberry Titans, and whoever else was in that league.  I played for the Prairie State Cardinals with Stuart for much longer than was ever really socially acceptable for a kid to have imaginary teammates and opponents.  Becoming an Indian was something that I thought would just happen, because I never dreamed of anything else.

Up until recently, this was what I assumed work attire was

Like I said before, I've been working on filling the cavity that the loss of baseball has left in my life with various other options.  Most of all, I've learned to love the little moments that sports give.  I love putting on a football helmet, I love the way a basketball feels when it leaves your fingers and you know it's going in, I love catching passes, I love starting the fast break.  Very few other places in my life (outside of possibly music in some situations) can provide such great enjoyment from such seemingly meaningless moments.

I wrote the first two paragraphs of this a few days ago, on the suggestion of a ginger, but I couldn't really see what angle to take on it.  Then, tonight, at 2:00 in the morning, after playing an hour and a half of pickup basketball and watching an hour of He Got Game, I finally realized what being washed up really meant to me.  Maybe I'm not as unlucky as I thought I was.  Maybe it's a blessing in disguise.  Until my senior year of high school, when I realized how quickly things were going to end, I probably would have used a lame knee to get out of practice.  I would have gone inside instead of hitting an extra bucket of balls.  Now, I'm finally realizing how much beauty is inside every moment for me, and I need to cherish it. 

The same must go for life.  Life is about experiences and moments.  It's not a checklist.  I want to take advantage of those moments.  I want to know that I appreciated every special moment when it happens, instead of looking back and realizing I missed it.  While I may be washed up in the literal sense, while I'll never get to step into a batters box or hit another meaningful shot in basketball, the lessons I learned from walking away from what I love can be carried elsewhere.  Maybe I'm only getting started.

A theory of relativity

This is part 1 of a series of important things I want to tell my children.

Over Christmas my mom and Stuart and I discussed the theory of relativity.  I've always had a major conflict with this theory.  I'd love to believe it (mostly because Einstein is a major supporter) except for the fact that it's weird as hell.  I don't know about you guys, but I've been raised under the belief that units of measurement (such as minutes, seconds, feet, gallons, BAC, etc.) pretty much remain standard.  Hearing that time can move faster or slower depending on the situation really messes with that idea. 

Actually, it looks like Al looks pretty confused himself...

Anyway, we were in the kitchen and Stuart and my mom (without a doubt the two smartest in the family) were discussing how time was the fourth dimension.  It was about noon, I'd woken up about twelve minutes earlier, and basically it was way more than I could handle, so I focused on the Honey Bunches of Oats (we've been out of Kap'n Krunch for approximately 8 months, harder to live without than you thought).

Mom, Stuart, and a creepy looking dude circa 1997

On the car ride back to South Bend I started thinking about this stupid concept, and believe it or not, I started to believe it.  I mean, how else could a car ride take so fricken long?  I therefore started driving faster, and now owe $175 to the state of Indiana.

I've been thinking more and more about this idea and finally today I realized why it always made a little bit of sense to me.

A few years ago my church had an interim minister named Gil Fauber, who I always had a pretty solid spiritual connection with.  He made a sermon about what he called "thin places," which were places where you felt more connected to God, or nature, or basically the rest of the universe.  There really isn't much other description than that.  If you have these places you already know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't found them yet you'll know exactly what I mean when you experience them for the first time.  I have thin places when I walk through Notre Dame's campus when it's empty, and it seems like it's just me and the universe, absolutely timeless.  I find them at the ballpark in late afternoon, when it's cool and humid and it feels like the game could go on forever.  I find it when I'm driving in the summertime with the windows down, or when I'm on the golf course when there's still dew on the ground, or when I'm listening to one of my favorite songs.

The thing that all of these places have in common is that there is no sense of time.  No matter how long I'm out there, it's like the outside world doesn't change at all, like the universe knows how important these places are to me and decides not to mess with them.  Somebody up there knows that these are the moments that we want to remember, that will live on forever inside of us.  The truth is, a few minutes earlier or later and the air wouldn't feel right on the ballfield, the grass wouldn't feel right on the golf course, or there would be a few other people walking through the serenity of campus, and the thin places would get a little bit thicker.  Instead, it seems like time freezes for everybody but still allows us to live in our moment.  The moment lasts for what could be hours, giving us enough time to really soak it all in.  Then once they're over, it's like time snaps and the hours rush forward to catch up to where it's supposed to be.  We need to treasure these moments, though, because if we don't treasure them, they'll come and pass just as quickly as anything else.  Maybe time really is the fourth dimension.  Maybe it does speed up and slow down.  Maybe the world isn't as simple as we think.

Important things to tell my kids

According to thinkexist.com, Larry Elder is "the sage from South Central."  If anybody knows what that means I'd appreciate some insight, because he said (at one point in his sagehood, naturally), "A goal without a plan is just a wish."  Therefore, I needed to make a plan to change my (apparent) wish of making millions of dollars off of my children in order to make it an official goal.  Larry Elder is really making my life a lot more difficult.

Young William's Long-Term Life Goals
1.  Marry a girl with a good job
2.  Become a stay at home dad
3.  Train my kids into superstar athletes and overall good people (but mostly superstar athletes)

The plan above is a watered-down version of a 487 page outline (8 point font) that I started (because of Larry Elder) on my computer as a file titled "Steps for living a great life," and plan to give to every girl that I ever intend on asking on a date, so that she can look it over and see if she even wants to give it a shot.  Included in that plan are day-by-day instructions for how I will become a drill sargeant total dick wonderful coach for my children.  Unfortunately, I'm still kind of cloudy on the whole "become a good father" thing (apparently it comes with experience).   Nineteen years without children has given me absolutely zero experience, and therefore I'm still unable to fill in the blanks about that portion of my future life.  Fortunately, the past nineteen years haven't been a total waste, as I've been able to pick up a few things along the way that I think are probably worth passing on in one way or another.  In the next few days (or weeks, depending on my motivation levels, get off my case), I'm going to throw out a few more of these.  Feel free to throw them back.