Monthly Archives: March 2013

ESPN, Life of Reilly, Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated, sportswriting

An Open Letter to Rick Reilly

Dear Rick,


There are a million reasons (and I don’t mean your paycheck) that you should not read this. To name a few, you don’t know me, the tone is direct, yet sincere – though to be honest, I take a few potshots. Yet most importantly, it ends with a direct call for you to do more.


Still, I had to write you. You see, writing is what I do, too, though I think we both do it for different reasons.


Before I go much further, I should offer my congratulations on your contract extension with ESPN. It’s a heck of a deal for you, being able to cover the topics you want in a medium you want, when you want. You’ve ascended to that moment when they pay you to do you. And that, in itself, deserves a tip of the cap. 


As you tweeted on Monday, the Worldwide Leader loves storytelling. It’s a natural fit, as you love storytelling as well. Human interest pieces have always been a prominent feature of your famous “Life of Reilly” columns. 


Well, I have a human interest story for you, Rick. It’s about the thousands of hungry, passionate young writers who grow increasingly frustrated as we watch you and many of your colleagues sit by and collect massive paychecks (for sportswriters, anyway) as we plug away trying to just get noticed.


But it’s not from a place of jealously, I can assure you. It comes from passion, and from a place where this is an art form, not a job. 


I’ve been writing for almost eight years now, sometimes for pay, sometimes for an e-mail from someone telling me they liked or hated what I wrote – and why. Sometimes, I write to an audience of just a few (my wife, my best friend or my mother – and to mixed results), other times to thousands of Central Indiana locals. 


I didn’t major in journalism, Rick. Didn’t write for the school paper. Two months after our wedding, I walked in and told my wife I wanted to write. About sports. And then I cringed. 


Amazingly, because, well, she is amazing, she said, “OK, what do we need to do to make that happen?” 


Well, that was both simple and incredibly difficult. All you have to do is write, find a voice, make a point, be compelling, tell a story, hit your word count, find an audience, repeat all that a thousand times, find a mediocre following and voila, you’re the national runner-up in a blogging contest on FoxSports.com. 


Which, when paired with a gift card from Starbucks, gets you a free cup of coffee. And I don’t even drink coffee.


I’ll be honest: man, I was bad. Like really bad. But I worked at it and over time, I turned out to be – well, not quite so terrible. A bi-weekly online column for a local newspaper, an editor job for a start-up magazine. Dynamics changed, so did the jobs, and currently, I write for basically whoever will read it. 


Yes, it’s a blog. Certainly, the stereotype of blogging somewhat fits. There’s just so many. And they are just so…poor. But it’s about the best way I know of to showcase what you’re doing, thinking and writing. It’s the ultimate clip, a group of writing samples that show the depth and breadth of what you can do. 


Yet despite the past seven paragraphs, this isn’t about me. And it’s really not about the thousands out there like me, who have stories that resemble mine, who dream of a break, a shot with the big boys to have our voices heard through print. 


This is about you, Rick, because there are a whole lot of us who just don’t get you anymore. 


I grew up reading you and “The Life of Reilly” on the back page. You and I both know how difficult it is to bring tears to the eyes of a high schooler, but you managed to do it quite a few times in the mid-to-late 90s. Those poignant pieces were touching, real and relatable. 


So I always assumed you got it, got what it was really all about.


Sports journalism and opinion-based writing is so much more than it appears now in the national media. Before PTI, Tony Kornheiser did that amazing piece on Nolan Ryan for Inside Sports in 1980 and absolutely mastered the longform piece. John Feinstein did “A Season on the Brink” and Peter King had the “Monday Morning Quarterback” column. 


Before all the ratings-grab radio, before Around the Horn and the goofiness of Steven A. and Skip, there were just writers., who did amazing things like that. Writers with powerful opinions who shaped the way we thought, the way we felt and how we reacted to sports and the people in them. 


Part of the joy of sports is the reaction afterward – having people to put perspective or spin on what we just saw. It never seemed about money. But it sure seems like it now. 


To be blunt, you write fluff, Rick. Every other line is a pun or a cliche these days. At times, it seems like you’re just pulling out the old hits and singing the chorus a little differently. What happened to the compelling guy who won the NSSA Sportswriter of the Year Award – 11 times? 


You may not like guys like Simmons and Whitlock, but at least they’re constantly trying new things. At least they’re out giving other writers a chance. At least they’ll retweet a link to a good piece every now and then. Look at your Twitter feed, Rick. It’s all about you.


You’ve arrived at a place many dream of and strive for, yet you do so little with it. And it’s disappointing. 


While your rival Simmons launches Grantland and gives a host of young writers a showcase spot to shine a light on quality writing, you turn in a column once every two weeks. Kind of like when the checks are mailed.


I’m not trying to be hurtful, honestly, but you once took Barry Bonds to task for the way he treated his teammates. What about the way you’re treating sportswriting?


It’s disappointing because this art form, this art form of sports journalism and opinion-based writing is dying. Painfully. 


Take a look around, Rick. Remember what it was like when you were in Denver or Los Angeles back in the 1980s – before Sports Illustrated and the coveted back page? 


The world has changed, to be sure. Newspapers are folding left and right, column space is dwindling as what remaining ad spaces increase. It’s why the papers – and magazines – are losing more and more ground everyday. 


We can blame technology all we want, but really, anything of quality can survive. But the quality of sportswriting is more watered down than a Lance Armstrong urine sample.


Around the Horn and the like exist because writers agree to do it – it’s how they’ll become bigger than just the city they cover. It’s not that they necessarily want to. They kind of have to. It’s survival. Once the papers and magazines inevitably go down, these writers will find other jobs. People will know them from TV and radio spots and they’ll be working SportsCenter with you soon enough. 


So they spend less time working on the art of sports writing. Less time fleshing out a column or an opinion. Less time arguing their point in print. More time in makeup. More time working on a catchphrase. More time working that Twitter feed. More time just typing and less time writing. 


Everything has become 140 characters or less. How would Tony K.‘s Ryan piece be received today? Deemed too long? Dare we even explain that was the point?


Rick, as you embark on your next chapter at ESPN, I urge you to do more.  You are a smart guy. Start your own thing, like “Writers of Reilly” or something. A place to highlight pieces that catch your eye. Or something else that will give back to the medium. 


It would mean a lot. Not just to me, or the countless unknown bylines out there who are not just looking for a break, but who are hungry to make a difference, to have our voice heard. Hungry to make it an art form again. 


As you like to say, you write about people in sports. You speak of legacies from time to time. I simply ask, Mr. Reilly, to reflect on what yours will be. Help save sportswriting. Make a difference. Maybe one day, one of us will then write about the real life of Reilly. 


Now wouldn’t that be a good story worth telling?


Sincerely,


Bri Moore




Standard
Ben Howland, Indiana Hoosiers, John Calipari, John Wooden, Kentucky Wildcats, Minnesota Golden Gophers, North Carolina, Roy Williams, Tubby Smith, UCLA Bruins

Great Expectations


The NCAA Tournament has a way of shattering dreams and expectations. It’s Cinderella for some, heartache for others. And it’s often best to just let it all sink in for a while before doing anything rash.
Unless, that is, you are UCLA. In which case, you are simply delusional about your program, your conference and the state of college basketball in general. Because less than 48 hours after falling to the Minnesota Golden Gophers Friday in the NCAA Tournament, UCLA fired head coach Ben Howland.
Now, maybe there was a massive settlement and they deemed it a mutual parting in the media, but let’s be honest, the dude got canned. 

And perhaps this would be understandable if you just looked at it from afar: once storied and prominent program falls in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and had failed to make it to the tourney consistently over the past three seasons.

But you have to peel back the onion. As most college basketball fans would remember, Ben Howland won the Pac-12 regular season with a relatively young team. They lost in the conference tournament championship without their best player (Jordan Adams, not Shabazz Muhammad) to an Oregon team that’s now in the Sweet 16. 

Oh, and let us not forget the three straight trips to the NCAA Final Four from 2006-08. 

Yes, three straight.
Had recruits not left for the pros or transferred, perhaps UCLA would have captured its first national championship since 1995. But Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love left early. His list of pros in the NBA is pretty impressive: Westbrook, Love, Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Jrue Holiday, Darren Collison, Ryan Hollins.
UCLA says it wants to get excitement back in the program, play a fun style, hard nose defense and pack the gym. OK, those are great goals, but it’s not 1975 anymore. Indiana had to learn this. You have to move on from the past. John Wooden isn’t walking through that door. And unless they bag Shaka Smart or Brad Stevens – and it isn’t for certain they would – who are you going to get that was better than Howland?
Former UCLA great Bill Walton kind of started this whole mess. He riled up the fan base by chastising Howland during the games he broadcast and said if he ran the program “things would be different.” He never really said how. Obviously, Walton didn’t do Howland any favors – and nor does he have to – but riling up a fan base that’s already lackluster these days doesn’t exactly produce positive results.
Westwood is filled with fans who don’t attend games but want banners on the wall. Big difference between UCLA and Indiana and Kentucky in that regard. Recruiting Los Angeles is difficult for UCLA, because they are also recruited by Arizona, USC, Cal, and really, the Pac-12 as a whole, as well as 50 others schools who swoop in and try to get L.A. players out of L.A.
This isn’t really a defense for Ben Howland, though it should be pointed out that President Barack Obama’s brother-in-law remains employed by Oregon State despite being one of the worst teams in the Pac-12, which isn’t the strongest conference these days anyway. 

Seriously, Oregon State has finished higher than 9th place just once in the five seasons Robinson has coached the team and finished dead last this season. But want to make a bet he’s still employed through 2016?

Howland wasn’t perfect, but he also wasn’t abysmal. No, the point here is that too many schools with tradition think it’s a birthright to win NCAA championships these days. And it isn’t. There’s too much turmoil, too many players leaving early, too many chances for upsets. Just look at the tournament bracket after the first weekend of games. Florida Gulf Coast is in the Sweet 16 and they weren’t even eligible to compete in the tournament until last year.
But is Georgetown firing John Thompson III? No. How about New Mexico firing Alford after it got beat by Harvard? Um, no. Is Kentucky firing John Calipari after they didn’t even make the NCAA Tournament and lost in the first round of the NIT? “Well, Cal, we know you won the title last year and lost your entire starting five to the NBA, but what have you done for me lately?”
Roy Williams and North Carolina were a No. 8 seed – in large part because several key players are gone from last year’s squad. If you think Indiana will remain as dominant in a post-Oladipo, post-Zeller world, you clearly haven’t been paying attention to college basketball the past five years. It will take the Hoosiers a year or two to climb back up that mountain as well.
No one is bullet-proof from the way the college game is built now. Maybe Duke, but not many others. You just don’t know how long some players will be around, and when you put together a team, you need time to blend all of it together to make it good. Imagine the NBA if LeBron could leave after a year or two. Imagine high school teams if their best two players chose to go to college early (if that were possible).
How do you build and compete with that kind of uncertainty. Better yet, how can you be expected to?
Apparently, you are – even at the oddest places. Minnesota – the same team that as an 11-seed upset UCLA on Friday and lost to Florida yesterday, fired head coach Tubby Smith. Smith is one of only a handful of active coaches who’ve won an NCAA championship (at Kentucky in 1998). When Minnesota got Tubby, it was seen as a coup. Now, the Gophers are apparently wistful for the days of Clem Haskins and NCAA sanctions.
And again, the question becomes: who is Minnesota going to get that’s better than what they had? And now they are competing for Smart, Stevens and other young coaches, with UCLA also hiring? Good luck with all that.
Schools are playing right into this current climate’s hands. They aren’t letting things matriculate, build and grow. They all expect to win now. Except not everyone can. Teams are winning games in the NCAA Tournament and then firing coaches the next day. What’s next? Lose in the Final Four and start your job search the next week?
That’s the problem with expectations: they are rooted in dreams, a best-case scenario of everything unfolding as you picture it in your mind. They aren’t often rooted in the reality of the times. They don’t plan for the unplanned.
So I would caution UCLA and its fans, Minnesota, and many others schools as they set out with dreams of banners and trophies that it would behoove you to balance your dreams with the reality of the current climate in college basketball. Find expectations that lie somewhere in the middle. Otherwise, you’ll be far worse off in three years than you were two days ago. 

Was it all so bad?

You can’t always get what you want; but you might find just what you need.
A good dose of reality. 
Standard
Dr. Seuss, Duke, Jim Valvano, Kentucky, March Madness, NC State, NCAA Tournament, The Meaning of Life

The Tournament of Life


And so begins perhaps the greatest 48 hours of our sports year. Sixty-four teams, 32 games. In the next two days, we’ll have basketball for 24 hours. It’s wild, it’s chaotic. Your bracket will be busted, but it matters little right now, because you think this is it: the year you pick ‘em all right.
(Um, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you won’t pick them all right – well, unless your bracket looks like mine, of course.)
To quote Seth Davis, “I love the smell of Madness in the morning!”
Let’s be honest, we’re all just swimming in giddiness right now. Like a kid on Christmas morning. I’ve got that Bill Cosby smile happening at the moment, the one where your head bounces from side to side, with a permanent smile plastered across your face.
I don’t know if it’s because of the pools, the actual filling out of the brackets, the madness, the sound of the buzzer, the anticipation, the fact that every team has a chance to have One Shining Moment or something else entirely, but there is always – always – something magical about this Thursday and Friday in March.
It’s a way of life, really.
As a kid, I’d sneak into school with a hand-held radio, run the headphones up through my sweatshirt and listen to the games all afternoon in class. Trick was to appear as though I was intently listening to whatever was being said by the teacher. He or she sounded like the teacher from Charlie Brown, but I nodded like I understood – and appreciated – the insight. In truth, I was in The Pit, or in Dayton or San Jose or wherever the game I was listening to was broadcasting from.
Oh yes, I’ve used the “Boss Button” – the button you would hit that would pull up a fake Excel spreadsheet at your desk in case someone walked by while you were watching the games. I’ve called in sick. I’ve gone to the games (when they were local).
I’m guessing many of you have done the same. There’s just a palpable hue in air, a feeling of great expectations and anticipation. What’s this year going to be like? Who’s going down? Who survives? Who advances?
Watching the ESPN “30 for 30” documentary Sunday on Jim Valvano’s 1983 NC State team was a reminder of this logic. Survive and Advance. The Wolfpack had to win the ACC Tournament just to get in – then went through a ridiculous stretch of overtime thrillers to keep surviving, keep advancing. They had to beat Ralph Sampson and Viriginia a second time, not to mention Houston and Phi Slamma Jamma, which was the 1989-90-91 UNLV of the early 80s.
There have been Cinderella’s, like NC State, and there have been years of total domination, too: UNLV in 1990, Duke seemingly every third year, Kentucky in ’96. Nearly every year memorable, every year magical. For the longest time, I could tell you every Final Four team in each season beginning with 1980.
The point is, people from all walks of life, from all over the country, young and old, get into this tournament. Maybe it’s the all-inclusive nature of the Big Dance. Maybe it’s the drama or the vulnerability of rooting for 18-22 year olds to be perfect for three weeks when they can barely keep themselves organized for three hours. Perhaps it’s the fact that really, every game is a Game 7 in the NCAA Tournament. There really is no tomorrow if you lose.
Today, my daughter’s school celebrates the life and writings of the great Dr. Seuss. And my favorite book is, has and perhaps might always be “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” The very real message in the book still rings true. About life’s ups and downs, the fact that you control your own destiny, that sometimes you’ll be going so fast in life you are out of control, and other times, you’ll realize you’re going down a dark and dangerous path. Sometimes there will be negativity, others people will be essentially singing your praises and rooting for you to win.
The message: you can do it, you can accomplish it, because you control your fate due to your ability to steer and guide yourself anyway you choose.
And really, isn’t that just a microcosm of what the NCAA Tournament is? Isn’t that really what life is? It can be done. You can survive and advance.
We choose and chose the lives we lead, the families we have (or don’t), the significant others, the jobs, the cars, the clothes, the house, the city we live in and the friends we surround ourselves with. We chose our the college we went to, the classes and major, whether or not to study for an exam.
These are our picks. Life is our real bracket.  
Really, we fill out the bracket of life as we go along our own tournament. Sometimes there are upsets, sometimes the favorite wins by 30. And maybe that’s why March Madness resonates with us just a little bit more, because it’s comparable, relatable in ways we don’t even realize. The only difference is, we can change our picks as we go.
Some days we are the No. 1 seed, others the 16. One moment, we’re a mid-major, at times, we feel like we’re from a power conference. We’re tournament-tested and prepared, then suddenly, we don’t look like we should even be in the field. One day, we’re sponsored by Nike, the next, we look like we’re sporting homemade uniforms and our name is misspelled. We’ve hit game winners, we’ve been blown-out. We’ve accidently called a timeout with none left. We’ve hit a shot as the buzzer sounds.
And truthfully, we like it this way. It’s unpredictable, just like this tournament. We never know what’s going to happen. And the options are endless. Each day, we survive and advance. Sometimes, it’s a struggle, other times, we look like we’ll run the table.
We’re all really just playing our own Tournament of Life, looking for as many Shining Moments as we can create for our highlight reel. We just have to keep filling out our bracket each day.
Surviving. Advancing. Hoping. Dreaming. Competing. Playing the game.
Let’s just enjoy the madness of it all.
Standard
Bob Knight, Indiana Hoosiers, Indiana University, Jeff Meyer, John Beilein, Michigan Wolverines, NCAA College Basketball, Rick Pitino, Tom Crean

All Apologies


The head men’s basketball coach at Indiana University is, to put it mildly, unpredictable on the sidelines.
He stomps his feet. He shakes his fists. He berates officials. He screams. He teaches.
He’s not wearing a red sweater.
 
No, Tom Crean isn’t Bob Knight – but he’s closer than you think. In fact, that much was evident following Indiana’s intense-laden, 72-71 victory over Michigan in Ann Arbor on Sunday.
Moments after a hold-your-breath final 20 seconds, moments after Jordan Morgan’s tip bounced around and around – but not in, moments after IU captured their first outright B1G regular season championship since 1993, there was another moment: Crean confronting current Michigan assistant – and former Indiana assistant – Jeff Meyer.
And Crean couldn’t stop himself from saying something.
“You know what you did!” Crean shouted. “You helped wreck the program! You helped wreck our program!”
He ran away with a grin that can only be described as half Cheshire cat, half Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
It was rebellious, it wasn’t entirely classy, yet given the circumstances, it wasn’t entirely unforgivable.
As a member of Sampson’s Indiana staff, Meyer had made impermissible phone calls to recruits, calls that along with Sampson and fellow assistant Kevin Senderoff, would put the storied program on sanctions that would nearly break the Hoosiers. Crean was hired, as has been documented, not knowing the full content of the allegations and sanctions and went to work with what might resemble a JV roster in the B1G. There were two walk-ons who’d scored a combined 36 career points.
Crean’s first season, 2008-09, the Hoosiers were 6-25. Six and twenty-five. Worst in school history. The following season, 2009-10, IU went 10-21. In 2010-11, 12-20.
Forget last year’s 27-9 Sweet 16 team. Those three seasons in basketball purgatory don’t ever leave you. They stick and stay – a funk that’s not easily removed. And it’s the anger behind those 66 beatings in three seasons that built up and came up Sunday on the court at Crisler.
It didn’t just boil over – it was directed at a person who played a large part in helping facilitate those 66 losses in three seasons. Following the game, Michigan coach John Beilein commented on how Michigan would always conduct themselves with class and how Meyer helped build Michigan basketball “brick by brick” since arriving in 2008 – just months after leaving IU and being a part of a staff that destroyed it brick by brick.
Coaches can sometimes act like the kids they coach. Tom Crean is no different. This may surprise many outside of Hoosier Nation, but Tom Crean has become somewhat unpopular. He cut down the nets last week after a loss. He’s getting into people’s faces, smirking and possibly enjoying some of these wins a bit too much. He’s brash.
He’s also not changing a thing. And in the process, he’s prepping his team for the NCAA Tournament. Indiana won that game with three timeouts just sitting on the table. They played through the missed free throw, the Zeller lay-up and the frantic final seconds without calling for a huddle. Crean’s players know what to do – which is an unbelievably good quality come tournament time. You never know when you’ll be out of timeouts with 30 seconds to play and trailing by four.
Indiana won ugly Sunday, trailing most of the game. The Hoosiers looked poor in losing, at home, to Ohio State on Senior Night. As I said last week, these are college-age kids and you can’t predict how they will play. But Tom Crean is coaching really well. And Hoosier fans are hoping these last couple seasons are the rebirth of another era.
It’s not. It’s the start of a new one.
Crean is not Bob Knight. He’s not throwing chairs or attacking his players. You know who Tom Crean really is? He’s Rick Pitino circa 1992-96 at Kentucky.
After the nightmare Kentucky went through in the late 1980s, Pitino had to rebuild that storied program, same as Crean, from the ground up, without star recruits. The Wildcats went 14-14 in 1989-90. And when Kentucky started winning again, Pitino enjoyed it, relished in it and made sure you knew it.
He started dressing his players in crazy uniforms, they responded with crazy games – like the legendary 31-point second half comeback against LSU in 1994. The roster began to fill with NBA-quality players who wanted to play for a fiery, intense guy like that. After that Duke loss in the 1992 regionals, Kentucky went on to play in the Final Four in 1993, 1996, 1997 and 1998 (without Pitino, but with his players), winning national championships in 1996 and 1998.
Indiana could be primed for a run like that, and the Hoosiers could become insufferable to the rest of the nation. With another stellar recruiting class coming up, Indiana is back and isn’t going away again anytime soon.
And neither is Tom Crean.
Do we wish these coaches wouldn’t do embarrassing things? Certainly. Then again, coaches like Pitino and Crean are the only ones bold enough to take on challenges like Kentucky and Indiana have faced and deal with the humbling losses.
Crean defending the program, unleashing a mocking tirade on a former assistant who, in a way, put him and the school through hell for three seasons of beatings, is more defensible that so many other coaches actions – most notably the actions of the man who Crean will be measured against, Knight.
Knight and so many coaches get caught up in discussing and taking controversial stances on things outside of what they know, which is little besides college basketball.
This was different – and it’s not something Crean should apologize to Meyer for.
We’ve become a little overly PC on the apologies. We apologize – and demand apologies for – nearly everything. We’re offended by the action, but we can also become offended if the apology doesn’t suit our ridiculously high standards. Was it sincere? Did they mean it?
Why don’t we just stop and examine what exactly demands an apology? Why can’t we deal with letting conflict exist? So Crean doesn’t think much of Meyer and his recruiting practices. Who cares? It’s overshadowing so many other stories from this game, this weekend. Last Wednesday, people wanted Crean and IU to apologize for cutting down the nets in their own building.
Why do we care? And why do we care to the point that we need to hear “I’m sorry.”
All these apologies. Ugh. I like a stern handshake, a vigorous pat on the back, a deep, lingering look directly into someone’s soul through their eyes. It’s the Michael Corleone “Fredo, I knew it was you!” moment. And it’s OK. People are allowed to not like one another – it’s what makes something a rivalry, which is now sorely lacking in sports because, well, everyone likes everyone so dang much.
If Crean wants to apologize for representing Indiana University poorly in a public setting then fine. If Crean feels like he should set a better example for his players, then fine. Apologize all over yourself, Tom. But Crean shouldn’t apologize to Jeff Meyer. Jeff Meyer should be apologizing to Tom Crean, to Indiana University and it’s fans.
If Crean continues on this path, no doubt he’ll have other things to apologize for.
Like winning. A lot of winning. 
I guess, in a way, he could be a lot like Bob Knight. 
And it’s the one thing he won’t ever need to apologize for. 

NOTE: The blog has been updated to accurately reflect that Meyer was never found guilty of major violations, but was part of the coaching staff that did. Meyer was cleared by the NCAA having committed minor infractions relating to phone calls and the NCAA found at the time that they paled in comparison to Sampson and Senderoff.

Standard
Dr. Seuss, Eric Holder, John Brennan, motivation, Rand Paul, Society, Theodor Geisel, United States Senate

Unless


On Wednesday, John Brennan was all set to be confirmed as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by the United States Senate.
Unless.
Unless someone did something.
And just before lunch, someone did, as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul took the floor and announced he was beginning a filibuster to bring light to recent comments by Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the dangers of drone strikes on U.S. citizens.
“I will speak until I can no longer speak”, he said. “I will speak as long as it takes…”
When Paul finally yielded the floor – over 12 hours later – realistically, he had not changed much. Delaying the inevitable, really. Brennan will still most likely be confirmed, possibly this weekend, and the discussion on drone strikes will fall back out of the public eye.
Unless.
Unless Paul did something just a little bit more than provide a speed bump to the legislative agenda of the Senate on a random Wednesday. Maybe he sparked an interest group to pick up the mantle and seek further dialogue with the White House on the matter. Maybe some journalist will write an expose on drones. Maybe he educated another 10 percent of the population on what the threat of a drone strike even was.
The point isn’t necessary what happens in the future, but that something happened in the now. Paul got attention – and then he used it for something. It doesn’t necessarily matter what the something was, or if you agree with it or like it. It doesn’t particularly matter if you like Paul or his politics or the filibuster tactic in general.
The world has changed so rapidly that time indeed feels like it moves faster to us, even though it doesn’t. We often remark how life moves at a faster pace than it once did. When I was a child, it seemed like the years were two or three times as long as they are now. Is it because my sample size was so small? Or is it because I actually remember so much? Naturally, we remember days and events when they are distinct and unique. It’s what, you know, makes them, well…memorable.
Early life is filled with firsts. First time you learned to read, first time a friend spent the night. A first game. The first time you saw your favorite movie or heard that song. Your first kiss. Your first heartbreak. The first time you saw your spouse. The first time a loved one died, the first time you held your child.
What I’ve realized is this world needs more firsts.
It’s the repetition that dulls the effect. We’re all just so busy now, with jobs, kids, appointments and soccer games, homework and functions. Pretty soon, we’ll look up and it will be Christmas season again and we’ll think to ourselves “where did this year go?”
Before we know it, a decade will have passed. And we often discuss doing something more, something different. Have you ever noticed it’s always in the future?
“Oh, I’ll have time for the kids when my job slows down” or “We’ll pay down our debt once we get promotions at work.”
Notice how these statements contradict each other? You can’t earn more money and see your family and friends more in modern America. There just aren’t enough hours in the day, right?
Except there are. There are just as many hours in the day for us as there was for Socrates, Lincoln, Da Vinci, Einstein, Disney, Jobs, Jordan. It’s all in how we spend it. We get so lost thinking about what we could do that we have forgotten completely about what we are doing. We’re not in the present, we’re in the past and the future while in the present. Our bodies are here, our minds are in 1999 and 2021.
Which means, simply, we’re wasting our nows by thinking about what we didn’t do before and what will do tomorrow. Tomorrow will be yesterday soon enough. Be passionate, purposeful and provocative with your time. If everyday looks the same, it’s because it is, which kind of completely the opposite of the point. Life is constant motion and growth. If we’re not eliciting that feeling within ourselves that we had during our younger days, then we don’t have enough motion and growth.
There is no grand finale. Death is the opposite of birth; life itself really has no opposite. The point of it is not for me to say. I can’t tell you what to do. It’s not my place and I’m not qualified in the least bit. I don’t even want to look underneath my own hood sometimes and examine what goes on in this brain.
But I do know that if nothing changes, then nothing changes.
At least Rand Paul stood up and talked about something. Yesterday wasn’t just another day in the U.S. Senate. Paul got attention and he used it to passionately push for change. He did something with the moment and I immediately connected it with the famous line from Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax”: “Unless someone like you cares a whole, awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Dr. Seuss was the pen name of Theodor Geisel, and both were perfectionists. Geisel reportedly threw out 95 percent of the material he wrote until he had settled on a theme. He preferred to be paid when his material had been handed in – a rarity in writing, as most are paid in advance. His first book was rejected 27 times.
But Geisel wanted to make the world a better place and found that he could do it by infecting common ideals that we could all agree on in fun, easy to read ways. He ended up helping millions of young children learn to read with his strange vocabulary, colorful and unique drawings and deeply thought provoking messages, usually around humanity and how we treat one another.
In other words, a morality play – kind of like this.
Nevertheless, Seuss’ books were morality plays that you and I remember. A voice, a message that stands out. Unique.
But we cannot tell what the overall message is anymore because it’s all jumbled together. If no voice stands out, it’s just noise. That’s why our days and years are getting mangled and tangled. We’re not empowering ourselves, we’re just running out the clock. We haven’t made our voice heard. We haven’t delivered that message that resonates. Each day looks and feels the same because, well, it kind of is.
Unless.
Unless we change it. Unless we prioritize and maximize and stop talking about when. I want my days busting with so much activity, either mental or physical, that when I’m 95, I’m ready to go because I’ll having nothing left in the tank. I’ll be done. Live forever? How about live for now?
So individually we can’t solve it all, but we the journey has to start somewhere. Can’t solve world hunger by yourself, but you could donate to a food pantry. Can’t fix a broken relationship or friendship in one day, but it could start with an apology. Can’t fix stop the nomination of a new CIA Director, but can bring light to an issue of importance to the American people.
Speak until we can no longer speak.
Unless.
Unless we’re all OK with this life we’ve created for ourselves. Unless we’re OK with our income, our jobs, our family time, our government, our tax rate, our foreign policy, our society, our faith, our health. Unless we’re just OK with everything.
If nothing changes, then nothing changes.
Unless.
Unless we care a whole, awful lot.
Standard