Championship Teams

Two things:

1.  Bill Simmons' new site, grantland.com, is excellent.  I strongly recommend reading every article.  And if you don't have time for that, just the ones by Simmons and Klosterman, and if you don't have time for that just the ones by Simmons, and if you don't have time for that, reevaluate your priorities.  Thanks to morebaseball.com for the tip.

Moving on...

2.  While being overpaid to stock shoes this morning, and still reveling in the scent of vanilla, choruses of angels (probably something having to do with Moses), soft summer breeze, and the faint sound of children laughing that have been following me (everybody?  I can't be the only one, right?) since the Mavs beat the Heat, I realized that, although my father didn't accomplish the rare Quadruple Crown of having his favorite teams in the four major sports (Packers, Giants, Bulls, Blackhawks) holding championships, we did have a situation where every title that had been won in the past twelve months was won by teams that prided themselves on their team-first mentalities.

Now, because A) I don't really know enough about hockey to start putting pen to paper on it, and B) all hockey teams seem to be pretty unselfish, we're going to skip over the Blackhawks.  I'm sorry.  That leaves us with, in chronological order, the Giants, the Pack, and the Mavs.


After years of carrying around Barry Bonds in order to score more runs than other teams, the Giants finally felt guilty and decided to make up for it by not scoring any runs in the 2010 season.

Actual Barry Bonds head to body size ratio

That's actually an exaggeration, but the Giants did finish 17th in the majors in runs scored, the lowest of any playoff team.  Instead, they rallied around their pitching, defense, a midget they found on the street named Cody Ross, a hobo living under the Golden Gate Bridge named Brian Wilson, and had a group meeting sometime in late August/early September to decide that they were the best team in the Majors and it would probably be fun to win the World Series.  Try to name a star on that team.  Sure, Wilson was good, but he could only pitch 1/9th of the innings.  Lincecum was solid, but only had a few playoff starts.  Ross hit well.  Juan Uribe had some clutch at-bats.  But get this: Edgar Renteria was the World Series MVP.


Let's let that sink in.


The man is 35, which isn't too old until you think about the fact that he abandoned his amateur status (which they should really give you a card to carry around for) at age 16, in 1992.  The man has a lot of innings under his belt.  The Giants stayed within themselves, played for themselves, believed in themselves, and won.  Outstanding.


The Packers put themselves in a similar boat by sneaking into the playoffs with must-win wins in the last three weeks of the season.  They then proceeded to blow through the playoffs like an invisible shank to Jay Cutler's knee.  They did this all with a total of 80+ missed games due to injuries to Week 1 starters, and then, just for good measure, Charles Woodson and Donald Driver got hurt mid-game.
 

At some point during the year, I'm convinced that Aaron Rodgers just decided that they weren't going to lose anymore, held a meeting, shared his opinion, and everybody cashed in on it, leading to your Super Bowl Champions list including Jordy Nelson and some guy named Brett Swain, who doesn't even have a picture on his Wikipedia page.


Coolest moment of the whole thing though? (Besides that awesome picture of Rodgers and Matthews on the podium that shows before Sportscenter)  The fact that during the post-game interviews, Greg Jennings kept referring to Donald Driver as the Packers No. 1 Receiver, even though Jennings out-received Driver by 25 receptions and 700 yards during the regular season.  Hell, Driver was 4th in yards.  Except it was his team, his receiving core, and that was fine with everybody because of all the intangibles that he had provided.

Yep, that's the one.

And then there are the Mavs.  The wonderful, wonderful Mavs.  Sure they had Dirk, but who else?  Jason Terry?  He didn't even start.  Jason Kidd?  Way past his prime.  There were exactly zero minutes in the series when Dallas had the talent on the floor advantage.  But they won because they decided they were going to win.  The popular opinion is that it happened right after Dwyane Wade knocked down the 3 in front of the Mavs' bench, but who's to say that it didn't happen the second that the tattoo artist finished putting the Larry O'Brien Trophy on Jason Terry's arm.  Everybody was watching Lebron James last summer while Dirk & Co. re-signed and got better.  I'm convinced that at some point, the Mavs were walking out of practice and somebody said, "Let's win the Finals," and that was it.  It was done.


Simmons really hit the nail on the head in his retro-diary of Game 6.  In his second-to-last paragraph he says, "When Dirk briefly disappeared under the arena after the final buzzer, presumably to cry and collect himself, it was the most genuine sports moment of the year. He barely made it, you could see him choking up. LeBron would have done it at midcourt in front of everyone, partly for effect, and maybe that's one of the biggest differences between them right now. You play basketball for you and your teammates, not for everyone else."

That last sentence really hits home with me.  There's something about being on a team, a true team, that is absolutely impossible to replace with anything else.  "You play basketball for you and your teammates, not for everyone else."

Although I didn't think about this at the time, looking back, it seems like the three teams that I talked about played without even realizing that there were people in the stands.  As anybody who has ever played on a team with real chemistry knows, there's something special about that bond.  You go through bad stuff together, you celebrate good stuff together, and you get to know each other better than you know just about anybody.  My teammates and my coaches have taught me that if you're going into a foxhole, you don't always want the most talented, but you do want people who are going to fight like hell until the bitter end.  You want people who won't let themselves lose and won't let you lose.  These teams did that.

My favorite teammates

These guys proved to themselves and to their teammates that they were the best.  There's a reason that announcers say that teams "shock the world," but nobody has ever claimed to be shocked themselves after a solid win.  They always know.  They always believe.  These three teams firmly believed that they were the greatest teams in the world, and they set out to, and did, verify it.

Reflections

Last night was frustrating for me.  Seeing the Bulls lose was tough, but in all honesty an NBA Championship was a stretch this year.  D-Rose can only do so much (especially when he stops getting the ball to Luol in the 4th), and the team still needs to mature and figure out their identity.  Yes, watching a thirteen point lead disappear in a matter of seconds was tough, but what was even worse was watching Lebron James flop, cry, bitch, and bullshit his way through that basketball game.

Before I get the "you hate him because he's the best" argument, I'll admit a few things:
1. Yes, he's the best player in the NBA.  Not the most valuable to his team, but absolutely the best.
2. He's an adult and can play wherever he wants to play.  He technically didn't owe Cleveland (home of your Major League Best Indians!) anything.

There.  That's out of the way.  Please wait a few minutes while I go confess to my sins of appreciating a douche bag.

While you wait, please notice: A. The score, B. Lebron being a baby, C. Dwyane Wade being embarrassed by Lebron's bitchiness

Thanks for waiting. 

The reason that Lebron James will never be better than Michael Jordan, will never be more valuable than Kobe Bryant, and will eventually get eclipsed by Derrick Rose and countless others is his inability to take responsibility for anything.  He is 26 years old and an 8 year NBA vet, but if you were to ask him, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to hear him claim that none of his 1,233 career NBA fouls should have been called, and that none of his teams' 249 regular season losses were his fault.

That being said, I do think that Lebron James Game 5 performance was one of the most important of all time.  Important in that every young athlete, before being allowed to compete in Little League, YMCA Basketball, Pop Warner football, or Mite hockey, must be required to watch James' reactions, his flops, and his "look at me" celebrations.  If any of those kids ever do anything similar to what he did in that game, they should be banned from all competition for the rest of their lives.

Kobe Bryant is out to beat people.  Michael Jordan went out to humiliate people.  Derrick Rose is out to prove himself, and is humble enough to realize that he hasn't accomplished anything yet.  Lebron James is out to make people watch him.  He's not a competitor, he's an entertainer.  Give him a Globetrotters uniform.

*******

On a related note, is there anything worse than watching a sporting event that you're extremely invested in with someone who is cheering for the same outcome but is less invested than you are?  "Young William," I hear you ask, "Are you talking about watching the Bulls with your mother?"

"Yes."

If you can't be with thousands of others cheering with you, sometimes the next best thing is to be absolutely alone.  I was forced to leave my lucky chair in the family room after I was reprimanded by more than one person for reacting negatively to the flagrant foul called on Carlos Boozer (his first good defensive play of the series, also, clearly not a flagrant.  He went for the ball, he made contact with the ball, he fouled in the process.  He was forced to foul due to the angle of the drive.  The NBA rulebook (No. 12, Part B, Section IV a.) states that a flagrant foul is called when there is "unnecessary" contact.  Boozer's contact to James was necessary), leaving the much lower quality basement TV, a much less comfy chair, but much more inner peace as I could watch the game as I saw fit.  This obviously wasn't ideal, so I propose the following:

We really need two separate airings of big games.  That way, the more invested fans can watch, scream, and cry in peace, and then let the more casual fans see everything (maybe even condensed into a one hour special) later on that night.  ESPN, let's talk.

Who needs elbows anyway

I don't normally just talk about sports on their own.  In fact, I don't know if I ever have, but this deserves some recognition.

Rajon Rondo just returned to a game in which the Celtics had an 18 point lead after sustaining a dislocated elbow a few minutes earlier.

I'll give you a little time to comprehend that.

More time.

Still haven't fully understood the magnitude of that?  Me neither.

This is shades of Billingsley in the Astrodome in the Texas State Championship, shades of Mary Lou Retton, shades of Paul Pierce.  My goodness.  I went through a period of not loving the NBA, not trusting the NBA, not wanting to be a fan, but that has all just disappeared.  For me, the NBA just went back into the category of "Sports My Grandfather Would Be Proud Of" along with baseball, hockey, pre-concussion rules NFL, and boxing.

I have no reason to be proud of Rajon Rondo, the Boston Celtics, or the NBA, but the fact that David Stern isn't rigging anything anymore, The Lakers losing to the Mavs Kobe losing to Dirk, and the concept of somebody doing something as gutsy as this in GAME 3 OF THE SEMIFINALS is unreal.  Last summer, the Heat LeBron James did something that everybody knew was against every rule in the masculinity book.  He pulled the ol' I'm a testicleless pussy "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" card, and took his bitchass talents to South Beach.  It was the saddest thing to happen in professional sports since Cliff Lee started against CC Sabathia in the World Series.

Except it was the greatest thing too.

Nobody else wanted to be LeBron James.  You could feel loyalty exploding from players, from fans, from coaches, from Carmelo Anthony, from GMs, from Dan Gilbert.  Derrick Rose decided that he was going to be the best player in the NBA and he did it.  Paul Pierce called out James from the start of the season, and then everybody dropped the gloves.  Pretty soon LeBron is throwing elbows at his coach, everybody realizes that Chris Bosh is a fake, GMs started trading again, the Bulls win without a single supporting castmember for Rose while Boozer and Noah are out, Blake Griffin is so good that he gets Baron Davis to play well again for a while, and everybody pretty much decides to create the best NBA season in recent memory (ever?).

We had an awesome first round.  Chris Paul balled again, Tyler Hansbrough proved that he's not a slouch (for now), Shane Battier finally beat his old Texas rivals once he got out of Texas, and the Knicks got smoked when Karma-elo finally came around.  Now this?  Down 2-0, the Celtics not only pull ahead by 10 in the third, but then EXTEND THE LEAD when their point guard goes down with a nasty injury.

AND THEN HE COMES BACK IN.

I didn't see this live, only online, but in my head I've romanticized this to follow the script from Miracle where Herb Brooks chews out Jack O'Callahan for being injured, except this time Ronjo is the one chewing out the trainer.

Rondo: "What the hell is wrong with you?? Pop it back in!"
Rondo: "I said pop it back in!!"
Trainer: "But it's dislocated.  You can't play."
Rondo: "Yeah, I know.  My bones aren't in the joints.  You know what, back off, I'll do it myself.  I've got no time for quitters."
Doc Rivers: "Come on Rajon, nobody's quitting here."
Rondo: "You worry about coaching this series.  There's plenty there to keep you busy!"

Then he pops it back in and goes and checks himself in at the scorer's table.

If you're the Heat, how do you react to this.  Not only has a Rondoless Boston team just extended the lead on you by 8 points, but now he's coming back in?  With his adrenaline raging?  In front of the one of the top two fan bases in all of sports?  Would it be okay to just forfeit and hope that Game 4 went better?

I've heard theories (that I think I believe) that LeBron James would have stayed in Cleveland if he would have had a father figure in his life.  The father's role is generally to stress hard work, loyalty, perseverance, etc, while the mother has historically been the one who comes in and makes you feel better after pops bitches you out.  They're the "do what makes you feel best, don't worry about what you're expected or relied on to do" people.  (In general).  So when LeBron was frustrated in Cleveland (home of your first place Indians!), LeMama finished with Delonte, rolled out of bed, and told BronBron to go have fun and take the easy way out as long as it would make it happy!  Yay!

Before you hit me with the "what about the Big 3 in Boston?" argument, listen to this.  Allen and Garnet were in terrible situations where they weren't going to win titles anytime soon.  They were past their primes, trying to get one last shot in.  The Cavs had been close.  LeBron was without a doubt one of the top two players in the league, without a doubt most valuable, and Dan Gilbert was bringing in talent to try to get him a title.  LeBron James was in control.  All he needed to do was stick it out, but he didn't.

If you had to pick a group of five dudes that I wouldn't want to piss off, it would be Rajon Rondo (always looks like he's going to kill somebody, scrappy as hell), Paul Pierce (survived a knife fight), Shaq (big, produced a rap album, meaning that he's probably a thug), Kevin Garnett (does anybody know what's going on in his mind?), and Ray Allen (but only because of his dad Jake Shuttlesworth).  The Heat won those first two games in Miami, but then went into the Boston Garden, House of Legends, of Bird and Parish and McHale and Havlicek, of 17 Championships.  Then, they have to mess with a just-hurt-enough-where-he-can-play-but-it-hurts-like-hell-and-he's-out-for-blood Team Engine (similar to MJ's flu game).  Uh oh.

It was clearly set up by whoever is in charge that the Celtics, everybody's least favorite team to play, were given rival New York, led by Anthony, and then huge rival Miami, led by the world's biggest narcissist.

Blue-collar city vs Prima Donna city.  The Old Guard vs two and a half of the best players of the next generation.  Reigning champs of the East vs the challengers.  And Boston even spotted the Heatles two games and a 10 to 9 arm advantage.

Yes, I think it's fair to say that the NBA is as much fun as ever.

The Authentic Self

The one Natural that I have ever encountered was Roy Hobbs.  I first met him about ten years ago, when Robert Redford came into my living room and introduced me to the dangers of women who invite themselves to your hotel room and the concept that someone could hit a baseball 600 feet on the reg after: A. Not having practiced for fifteen years; and B. Having been a pitcher in his previous career; as long as C. The bat that was used had been infused with lightning.

I took both points to heart, and while I'm still to allow a wary woman into any hotel room I've occupied (which has worked out quite well, as can be seen by my lack of gunshot wounds to the hip), I do credit the second major concept from that film with ending my baseball career.

Young William showing a confident smile, knowing that all he needs is a magical bat to keep his baseball career going.

Young William circa October 2009 upon finding out that he'd been cut from the Notre Dame baseball team.

Unfortunately for me, I never found a lightning bat and I hadn't worked hard enough to make it the old-fashioned way.

***

My buddy Pete recently gave me The Legend of Bagger Vance (novel form).  I had planned on using it to avoid reading my psychology textbooks, but I was unable to do that as Pete obviously had me figured out from the beginning, because after a mere 74 pages, I stumbled into a trap of deep psychology.  For anyone who hasn't read the book or seen the movie, Bagger Vance is a caddy of mysterious origins who is less of a man who carries a golf bag and more of a life coach.  That's not to say he isn't a golf fanatic.  He is.  And while he does know the game from physical side, he is more worried about the mental and spiritual aspects to it.  He has the belief that every golfer has an "Authentic Swing," which cannot be coached, but rather follows the player from the very first time he picks up a club.  He describes the swing with a man named Keeler, another student of the game, thusly:

 

"'I believe that each of us possesses, inside ourselves,' Bagger Vance began, 'one true Authentic Swing that is ours alone. It is folly to try to teach us another, or mold us to some ideal version of the perfect swing. Each player possesses only that one swing that he was born with, that swing which existed within him before he ever picked up a club. Like the statue of David, our Authentic Swing already exists, concealed within the stone, so to speak.' Keeler broke in with excitement. 'Then our task as golfers, according to this line of thought...' '...is simply to chip away all that is inauthentic, allowing our Authentic Swing to emerge in its purity.'

As I'm sure you've all figured out, he's not just talking about a golf swing.

"'Consider the swing itself,' he said. 'Its existence metaphysically, I mean. It has no objective reality of its own, no existence at all save when our bodies create it, and yet who can deny that it exists, independently of our bodies, a...s if on another plane of reality.' 'Am I hearing you right, sir?' Keeler asked. 'Are you equating the swing with the soul, the Authentic Soul?' 'I prefer Self,' Bagger Vance said. 'The Authentic Self'"

Once again.  Not only targeted towards golf

Will Smith as Bagger Vance.  Quick side rant: This absolutely should have been Morgan Freeman.  Big Willie Style is way too young/unmysterious for this gig.

 Bagger Vance believes that there are three paths to find one's Authentic Swing Self.  The first is Discipline - hard work, dedication, commitment.  The second is Wisdom - analyzing, dissecting.  The third, however, is a "pure love of the game."  Only when this pure love is actualized does the Authentic Swing Self come about.

***

In The Natural (movie version), Roy Hobbs hits a home run to win the Pennant for the New York Knights (great name for the future Nyets, Prokhorov), blows up the light towers, and rounds the bases in a shower of sparks.  The only thing he learns is that it was him, not the bat, the whole time.  

In The Natural (book version) [Spoiler Alert], Roy Hobbs strikes out.  He's been forcing a relationship with the owner's daughter, which has clearly been a terrible idea from the start.  He gets paid to throw the pennant, and while whether or not he actually does is left unclear, he is faced by a child at the end who tells him to "say it ain't so," and Roy can't.  He has tried to force himself into being a celebrity instead of the simple man that he grew up as.  He tries to force a relationship with a woman who repeatedly shows no signs of caring for him.  He tries to build himself into a superhero instead of being himself, and the book ends with him walking away in the rain, a sorry and bitter man.

If asked how to describe Roy Hobbs' Authentic Self after finishing that book, I'm fairly confident that nobody could actually do it.  He grows on his strong, farmboy values, throws them away, and then is left in a state of ambiguity.  It could be that the natural wasn't so natural after all, or it could be that he simply stopped after the Discipline step from Mr. Vance.  He put in the time, the dedication, the effort to try to woo Memo (the girl) (shouldn't a weird name like that be the first clue that something's wrong??), but he never stops to analyze how terribly the situation that he's putting all of his time towards, and he certainly isn't doing it because of some pure love.  

You see, it's really easy to find Discipline when you want something.  The dedication and hard work that Bagger Vance refers to are the first (and often only) things that we try to increase when faced with a goal.  We rarely reach the Wisdom step, and almost never do things because we have a Pure Love for them.  We have the ability work so hard for something that we want it to be love so much that we can convince ourselves it is, but often it is contaminated with things that would be clearly noticed if we ever took the time to do the dissecting and analyzing that Bagger requests. 

That's because Pure Love can never be forced.  Pure love occurs when you love something for what it is.  You have no desire to change it.  You have no desire to manipulate it.  You don't approach it looking for something in return.  Pure love means loving something unconditionally for what it is in the purest sense.

I think that the most important line from Bagger's whole talk about finding the Authentic Self is when he says that what we need to do is to "chip away all that is inauthentic, allowing our Authentic Swing to emerge in its purity."  He says swing, but once again, I'm pretty confident that he means Self.

This doesn't mean that we need to avoid all outside influences in the world.  My parents have different ideas for what my life should be than what I think it should be.  I don't mind dropping a few tenths of a point on GPA in order to experience something that I feel I'll value more in twenty years, but they're worried about my grades because grades lead to jobs, which is a hard stance to argue with, especially considering that they've put me under their roof for the past twenty years, they've fed me, raised me, clothed me, made me into who I am today.  Just because they want something different from what I want doesn't mean that I have to run away from it.  It just means that I have to understand why our views differ.  I need to have a conscious, concerted effort to understand who I am even when the world is throwing influences at me from every angle.  

I'm guilty of having done things to get something in return.  I'm fairly confident that we all have.  I've thought at times that having a girlfriend would be great just for what it stood for, and not for who the person was.  I've wanted leadership roles for status instead of to lead.  What I've recently realized, however, is that I'm always a lot happier when I control myself and hope that that leads to the consequences I desire than when I throw myself at a desired consequence and totally lose control of myself, and while I never realized it before about an hour ago, I'm pretty sure that Bagger and I are on the same page.

It seems to me that all of this could be avoided if we simply turned our Discipline efforts another direction.  Instead of trying to attain something, why do we not focus those efforts on ourselves.  God knows that we have room to improve.  If we really, truly put as strong of an effort as we can into finding and maintaining our true selves, into chipping away the inauthenticities, as we do into manipulating other people to like us, we should be able to figure it out pretty quickly.  

And isn't that the person that we want other people to see?

Time is way too short to try to bullshit people with a false self, and even if it wasn't, why the hell would we want to do that?  Personally, I would rather find one person who loves me for my true self than a thousand who love me for something I'm not.  When we meet others we automatically go through the Wisdom stage.  We analyze them, we dissect them, we recall past experiences to figure out what's going on with them.  That's easy.  That's a short step.  We do that every day.

If we can take these first two steps and really, honestly be happy with them, that is when we will find a pure love for our Authentic Self.  We need to take that Discipline, take that Wisdom, and figure out what we truly are, and once we have, once we've analyzed and dissected it all away we will find out that we've found ourselves.  And if we've gotten rid of all the things that we really can't stand, if we've chipped away all the unnecessary buildup that has stuck to us, chances are that the stuff that's left is something that we love.

The hardest part of this whole thing (as recently pointed out by Pete) is not actively analyzing what's going on when it's going on.  You can't think in the middle of a golf swing.  You know the checkpoints of the swing, you know the basics, but you can't be constantly analyzing it to see if you've hit them.  You just have to trust that it'll happen.  You have to do.  You have to be.

I know that I have to figure out who I am before I jump into relationships.  I need to have confidence in myself.  I also need to be able to look back and know where I deviated from that self.  I obviously need to know how my Authentic Self acts, I can't do outrageous things and just hope to analyze them later, but like the golf swing, I just have to trust that I'm hitting my checkpoints and being myself and not be constantly double-checking to make sure I've been there.  If I keep looking back, by the time I turn around the moment will be gone, and that's not what the moment is for.

The moment is for being.  I want to be me.  Just like trusting my golf swing to hit the ball down the fairway, I need to trust myself to find pure love and to ride it out for as long as it lasts.  If it ends, I can figure out why, but bliss isn't meant to be interrupted by the conscience.  If it's all set up on the tee waiting to be driven straight and true 250 yards down the fairway, I have a responsibility to let it fly.  If I shank it into the trees and the relationship falls apart, that's the time to figure out what I did wrong, where I deviated from my swing, but for now, I'm going to trust myself to be the person that I know I am, and I'm going to love this for all it's worth.

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.