Category Archives: Life

Life, NCAA College Basketball, NCAA Tournament, Philosophy, positive thinking

Addition by Distraction

When Wichita State guard Fred VanVleet’s last second heave bounced helplessly off the rim in the final moments of a historic and emotionally draining loss to Kentucky, it was over.

referees-iowa-state-north-carolinaWhen the refs of the Iowa State – North Carolina tilt got together shortly after the horn sounded, for what felt like another long NCAA Tournament commercial break, and decided that yes, in fact the math of delayed clocks starts and timeouts evened out, it was over.

Just like our upcoming Spring Break, my sister-in-laws pending nuptials, my son’s just-underway baseball season and that movie you have been dying to see.

These are all distractions, and they will eventually end. Many of them happy, of course, but what lies beyond?

We use these distractions, these things, these events in life as markers and moments to look forward to, to enjoy, knowing full well that nothing can last forever, but being just a tiny bit saddened when the reality sets in that the moment has indeed passed.

Time stops for no man, as they say.

Now, you can take this one of two ways. You can be saddened by this fact that everything ends and spend your days locked in nostalgia and reliving the past.

Or, you can choose to enjoy each moment for what it is. You can be here, now. You can choose to actively be present in your life. Immerse yourself in the good and the bad of it all and let the negativity and drama wash away.

As the great Dr. Seuss said, those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. (I could be paraphrasing here.)

This is life and too much of it is spent on the trivial details that don’t really matter. The hard part is we rely on distractions to help us pass the time. We go from New Year’s to NFL Playoffs to College Basketball and March Madness to Baseball and Spring Break to summer cookouts, concerts, vacations, football of all levels to the Holidays. And then we repeat.

Mostly, we’re just trying to get through the day until the day becomes the end of the week. And we’re passing along through this life without truly getting the point.

Now, I do not pretend to know what the point is. And I’ve spent several hours writing about it in a variety of similar ways. I am still working on it. And that’s just it; you never really stop working on it. Life is kind of a long education.

So for the friends and readers who get tired of the motivational, introspective mumbo-jumbo I’ve been producing, that is perfectly understandable. I’ll give you the same advice I give myself, friends, family and colleagues all the time: choose something else.

Change your distractions so they are not subtracting from your life. Let your distractions be additions to your life.

Case in point: if friends on Facebook are annoying you with selfies and negativity, then hide them. Defriend them. Do whatever you gotta do. But at the end of the day, that is a you problem. It is their page and they can post 400 pictures of their kids, their vacations and as many happy quotes as they want. You don’t have to look at it.

Same goes for Twitter. If you don’t like my stream of Disney World construction photo retweets, surfing photos and random sports commentary that is perfectly OK. I’m a weird dude, and I am OK with it. But if you are not, then stop following me. We can still be friends.

But we tend to lock in on things and get stuck on repeat, focusing more on the other party (and what they do not even know they are doing to annoy you) than our own issues. In these cases, our distractions become our obsessions.

It is a fine line we toe between rooting for our favorite college basketball team to win a game – and getting into fisticuffs with a fan from a rival team…during dialysis treatments.

Distraction is being more than curious about what happened to the Malaysia flight that has still yet to be found. Crazy obsession is pretending to fly the plane like a five-year-old in his backyard on cable news.

We are constantly battling these two sides of ourselves. Distractions give life spice and variety, something to enjoy, something to look forward to, something to focus on. Hone in on them too much, though, and we become wild beasts obsessing over the material goods of the world.

Sadly, much the world has become about the material.

It occurred to me, somewhat rather recently, that the past few years have been nothing but a growth stage for me. I did not particularly think I had much left to do in the ways of growth, but I have felt as though my heart was physically expanding, my head hurting with new thoughts and new ideas, knowledge that I did not know I did not have.

And all this time – at least the past two years – I’ve been writing to myself in many ways. Trying to remind myself of what I value or at least what I should, what I need to keep valuing and what I need to let go, all for the sake of finding a positive path for myself and my family on this crazy road of life. It calms me and helps me remember that your destination is not a collection of trinkets, but instead of memories of time well spent collecting life.

Others, including some of those who are or were once quite dear to me, seem to disagree. And of course, to each his own. We can only control what we can control, which is just ourselves.

If you are bothered by the fact that someone you know has changed, then you miss the point. We all should change. Who wants to remain stagnant? Change implies motion, staying the same means there is nothing new to you, and I’m not a fan of reading the same book twice.

bakerGo onward, upward; get new experiences. Old friendships should serve to fuel new adventures, not rehashing old mistakes and slights. Either you can move on, forgive and forget or you cannot. But it does no good to remain in the status quo.

Not long after Wichita State had it’s perfect season ended at 35-0, redshirt sophomore Ron Baker, who had a fabulous game, blankly looked at the press and gave a great explanation of dealing with the loss to Kentucky.

“You’re going to go through some humps in your life, kind of like this one. It’s tough to see us go out like this,” Baker said. “At the end of the day, someone’s got to go home.”

It’s somewhat of a strangely put together quote, with a tinge of sadness, yet a grounded sense of optimism. And really, it’s true. You hate to see it end – whatever it is. Coming home from vacations are rough, the loss of a long friendship is rough, the end of a season that you’ve poured yourself into, is indeed tough.

But life is not over, it continues on. How you approach the next distraction, where you place it on the scale of overall importance can affect you for a large portion of time in this life. And I have somehow arrived at a point where I have mildly convinced myself that as long as it is, it is also quite short.

I like Kevin Bacon’s idea, frankly.

This is a party. Let’s dance.

 

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Life, NFL, Philosophy, pop culture, positive thinking, Rashard Mendenhall

Pulling a Mendenhall

Last week, I heard a story on the radio that rated the Midwest, specifically the major metropolitan close to the suburb I reside in, as one of the hardest working cities in America.

No doubt, many who heard this locally puffed their chests out a little bit with pride. Others perhaps slightly lamented this fact, as they thought about the hours put in to their specific jobs and all the things they’d rather be doing. Both these groups and anyone in the middle carried on with their day, which was likely spent trying to impress someone else.

The brutal truth is this: We cede power of our self-worth to someone else’s opinion. In fact, we care way too much about what people think of us. We spend too much time wracking our brains over a comment someone makes, spinning it out of control in our own mind to the point of obsession.

Sadly, we let this define us. From our self-worth to emotional balance, we are infinitely more worried about someone’s opinion reign supreme over what we say we value.

Actions must always speak louder than words, and sometimes you’d be amazed at where you will find a voice of reason. I’d never given much thought to Rashard Mendenhall, an NFL running back who just announced over the weekend he was retiring at age 26. I did not know what his likes or his interests were, nor that they would even be close to my own.

In fact, upon hearing of his retirement, the immediate reaction I heard on talk radio was that of ridicule, mostly because why would someone throw away a promising NFL career at 26? All that money! All that fame!

mendenhallThen, you read Mendenhall’s thoughtful comments, delivered without a press conference or fanfare, and you get it. Or at least you should. He speaks of the changes in our society and not finding a way to fit in:

Today, game-day cameras follow the most popular players on teams; guys who dance after touchdowns are extolled on Dancing With the Starters; games are analyzed and brought to fans without any use of coaches tape; practice non-participants are reported throughout the week for predicted fantasy value; and success and failure for skill players is measured solely in stats and fantasy points. This is a very different model of football than the one I grew up with. My older brother coaches football at the high-school and youth level. One day he called me and said, “These kids don’t want to work hard. All they wanna do is look cool, celebrate after plays, and get more followers on Instagram!” I told him that they might actually have it figured out.

And he is absolutely correct. Times have changed, rapidly so, over the past 10 to 15 years. The increasingly connected world we have created through technology makes it a more social place, but a less emotional one. We do just kinda want to look cool.

If we look hard-working, put together and speak well, watch all the right shows and drive the right cars, then we’ve got what exactly? A meaningless, consumer-driven existence that we have built solely on what others think is meaningful or cool.

And that group of “others” is a rabid bunch, documenting every up-and-down. One minute, you are beloved, the next, a bum. In this constant over analysis, we forget there are no experts, just opinions. And as we know, Americans have lots of opinions – and we are paid and unpaid to share them.

As Mendenhall says:

There is a bold coarseness you receive from non-supporters that seems to only exist on the Internet. However, even if you try to avoid these things completely — because I’ve tried — somehow they still reach you. If not first-hand, then through friends and loved ones who take to heart all that they read and hear. I’m not a terribly sensitive person, so this stuff never really bothered me. That was until I realized that it actually had an impact my career. Over my career, I would learn that everything people say behind these computer and smartphones actually shape the perception of you — the brand, the athlete and the person.

Perception shaping reality? Around these parts? No… you don’t say. There is a snowball effect to perception, one of the lessons we did not learn from early educational books. And when we start to feel its effects, it damages us in many, many ways.

From our parents, to our coaches, our teachers and friends, we begin to rapidly care about what other people think of us. In a vacuum, influence is not necessarily a bad thing. When it changes who we are, why we do or do not do certain things, then influence holds too much power over us.

It strips away individuality that produces well-balanced and centered people. There is certainly enough room for all of us, with our various likes and interest, just not enough acceptance. We’re all like the movie “Mean Girls” and life continues to operate like the cool kids table in the cafeteria. That is, if you let it.

Mendenhall is getting out of professional football, at least to my understanding of what he’s saying because he is a person of various interests who wants to live a full and complete life. He’s done the NFL and it was fun, but now, it’s time for something else.

Over my career, because of my interests in dance, art and literature, my very calm demeanor, and my apparent lack of interest in sporting events on my Twitter page, people in the sporting world have sometimes questioned whether or not I love the game of football. I do. I always have. I am an athlete and a competitor. The only people who question that are the people who do not see how hard I work and how diligently I prepare to be great — week after week, season after season. I take those things very seriously. I’ve always been a professional. But I am not an entertainer. I never have been. Playing that role was never easy for me. The box deemed for professional athletes is a very small box. My wings spread a lot further than the acceptable athletic stereotypes and conformity was never a strong point of mine. My focus has always been on becoming a better me, not a second-rate somebody else. Sometimes I would suffer because of it, but every time I learned a lesson from it. And I’ll carry those lessons with me for the rest of my life.

steve-jobsThese are lessons we have all previously learned and now ignored. How many times are you questioned? Daily? Weekly? If you do not do whatever everyone else is doing or how they would do it, then obviously you must not love it or care about it, right? There is an unprecedented level of competition that has entered our minds – a battle between others and ourselves. A game of one-upsmanship, where anything you can do I can do better. I care more about my job than you do because you did not respond to the “urgent” e-mail at 10:05pm last night.

But rarely is that so. Most of us care. Most of us try. But this fight to keep perspective, it is a challenging one. It would be nice – yet unrealistic – if we all just believed when someone said they were working on it, taking care of it or that they tried their best.

Let your actions be your words.

Worried about your height and if people think you are too short or too tall? Worrying about it won’t make you grow, or shrink. Your ancestors and the gene pool took care of that long before now.

Worried about what clothes you wear, what car you drive, how you talk or what others will say when you meekly admit to having never watched “The Wire” or “Breaking Bad”? Why? What does any of that mean or say about you anyway?

To be proud of who you are and what you like is to be an individual, which means you are different. You are not just one of the crowd. We are not cattle, to be prodded toward unity. In the modern age, ridicule and harsh words are used as scorching prods and we are well branded by each other.

Mendenhall’s final statement rings most true:

As for the question of what will I do now, with an entire life in front of me? I say to that, I will LIVE! I plan to live in a way that I never have before, and that is freely, able to fully be me, without the expectation of representing any league, club, shield or city. I do have a plan going forward, but I will admit that I do not know how things will totally shape out. That is the beauty of it! I look forward to chasing my desires and passions without restriction, and to sharing them with anyone who wants to come along with me!

I could not think of anything better: a decision to be and live freely, without worry of judgment without expectation of what everyone else thinks.

We all kind of have a plan, but cannot begin to predict how it will play out. Uncool and unpopular and un-put together as that may seem, we could all afford to be called some of the most passionate people on the planet, who follow dreams and see what the road of life has in store. What if we were called some of the most relaxed, or even-keel, down-to-earth people in America?

Now that would be a statistic based on opinion I could learn to care about.

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Life, opportunity, Philosophy, positive thinking, resolve

The Life in Little Spaces

Last week, a dear friend of mine texted me with a heartfelt request: please write something light-hearted and fun.
“When was the last time you wrote something fun? I like your writing, always have and you know that, but it is so serious. I worry people will think you are depressed.”
I thought on that for a bit. I can see his point. I shuffled through this blog and found that even when I thought I was being light, I was still being heavy in tone and message.
And for the past week, I’ve been searching for something, anything, that I can write about that would be fun, fluffy and less “on-edge.”
But I cannot do it; at least not at this moment.
I am not depressed. I’m actually quite happy. I suppose if you want funny, try The Onion – uh, at least the online version anyway. I enjoy comedy and humor. I can’t wait for Anchorman 2, and the clips of the British gentleman arguing about Michael Caine impressions crack me up.
But perhaps I’ve changed.
My writing comes from a place of inspiration and motivation, which is where I think I should probably be spending the majority of my time – inspired and motivated. And I am inspired and motivated by very little: just to change the world and make it a less selfish, self-serving place, with less complaining and more enjoyment, where people interact positively and attempt to do good.
I wish I could blame this on my kids and say that being a father changed me. It did, in so many wonderfully challenging ways, but my wife and I had children long before my mindset changed. For better or worse, this is my voice now. I am compelled, not out of a belief or right and wrong, but because it feels like a calling, a destiny.
And as the great voice of our times, Ke$ha, once said, we are who are.
Someone of perhaps equal importance from the past, some dude named Gandhi, once said your values become your destiny.
I cannot speak for anyone’s values but my own. Values come from what we believe, which is really just opinion. And we all opine. Life is opinion and simply a matter of perspective.
And it can change if you allow it, from a number of different sources – which is the beauty of life. It could be a movie, a song, an event. Death has a way of putting life in perspective. Loss often affects us more than any gain. Loss accomplishes what we should have known and appreciated all along – that we had it but did not realize it.
What holds us back? Simply stated, us.
There is really no difference between you and those you would deem as accomplished outside of perseverance, motivation and belief. The problem is, those are increasingly hard to come by. They cannot be bought – though we certainly try in a variety of ways – through books, speakers, events, inspirational videos and the like.

Yet all that is temporary and fleeting. Longer term, only we can build the path we seek. It doesn’t come to us, wrapped like a Christmas present.

Success in a box? For me? Why, you shouldn’t have.

Life is our gift, yet we are constantly looking for a gift receipt. We’re looking for discounts and sales, return policies and guarantees in life, in relationships.
One day, someday, wishing, hoping – none invoke any amount of self-resolve needed to define life your terms.
Negativity breeds, infects and spreads. Ignore it, get away from it. Laugh at it. Do something to remove yourself from it and the negativity of the world.
I’ve come to understand it is the stuff we don’t think matters that we actually think matters. Just look at your social media feeds. Your own timeline and those of your friends will tell you everything you need to know about what your focus is on.
Life occurs in the space between the spaces. Too esoteric? What I mean is you will find your values, your truths and beliefs in the moments between moments.
Who are you when no one is looking? Do you take pride in keeping yourself well-presented, not for others, but for you? Do you hold the elevator? Let the car waiting in during a traffic jam? Do the dishes at someone else’s house? Look people in the eye? Are you honest, yet reserved with how brutal and hurtful that honesty can be? Do you show tact and general decorum? Take your shoes off when entering someone’s home? Call instead of text?
You see, those moments, and thousands more like them occur on a daily basis and we miss our real opportunities to make an impact in the world or to show who we really are. We’re stuck thinking it’s these big, life-defining events that display who we are. On the contrary, we define our own lives in the seemingly insignificant moments in between those moments.
If the world feels like it’s attacking you, putting you down and betraying you, then you ought to be proud. Don’t be like the world – we already say it’s messed up enough, so why would you want to fall in line with it?
Therefore, I’ll keep writing about what motivates me, without compensation, because no one needs to pay me to be who I am.
As for the humor, well, I suppose I can work on that, too. Come to think of it, my voice impressions are pretty good.
Perhaps I’ve just became more interested in making an impression than doing one.



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children, Life, Philosophy

Life’s Tough, Forget the Helmet

It is difficult to identify when it all began. Was it a slow progression, or just a band-aid like effect? Were we intentional about it, or was it just a subconscious social switch?
Whatever the case may be, we have become weak as individuals, which make us weak as a society.
I think I’ve noticed signs for some time, but the biggest was when several, if not all, of our surrounding communities postponed Halloween trick-or-treating this year due to an expected heavy rain storm.
While this is not intended to be a political statement or commentary on the towns and cities that made the decision, it is what it is. I’m certain the town and city councils or members of governing bodies who make such decisions did their due diligence and determined it was best for the children to stay out of the elements.
So this conjecture I have about weakness is not based just off one incident, yet instead serves as a microcosm of a bigger argument.
My wife and I looked at each other just downright confused. We waxed nostalgic about how “back in my day” we’d have put on a coat and got ourselves some candy. I’ve worn a mask in 80-degree heat and gone trick-or-treating with a winter coat due to flurries.
There are other indications, too. The helmets, knee pads, thigh pads, elbow guards and mouthpieces children are now recommended to wear riding a bicycle is a good one. Yeah, uh, I learned to ride my bike in the country. We had a gravel road and no concrete. Needless to say, I bled.
And my father, as kind as he is and was, looked at me and simply said, “How bad do you want to learn to ride that bike?” His point: it’s going to take some effort and some education.
My first basketball court was on dirt. The ball went through the basket and hit the ground – and pretty much stayed there. You had to pound the rock to dribble more than twice. And with enough use, the dirt court became a clay court.
How bad do you want it?
We drink water from bottles, which is still somewhat absurd and probably will be to me forever. We use gallons of sanitizer to protect us from spreading germs, but we seem to be sicker, longer, with a common cold than we used to be.
As a father of four, I certainly wanted people to wash their hands before holding my child as a baby. And I’m not so tough that a good Disney themed band-aid isn’t useful when it’s actually unnecessary. Like, there’s not even a scratch there unnecessary.
But aren’t we taking it all a bit too far? It seems strange considering we’re regressing in so many other areas – like general decency and kindness – but we’ve coddled ourselves and our children to the brink of crippling ourselves, and worst of all – them.
My wife and I play with our kids a lot, but we also tend to kind of let them go. Short of intruding on someone’s personal space or property, I’d prefer to let them learn and imagine. And, if it happens, get a little bump now and then.
Because that’s life.
It’s not all giggles and sunshine and 15 popsicles in an hour. They are going to get hurt in some sort of fashion and I don’t want them reacting thinking that the world has ended if they do.
We’ve made strides that will help them learn from our mistakes. Concussion testing, disease prevention, merging biology and technology, education and new information about the way children learn and what they learn are all moving us forward to a new age and one filled with opportunities.
But on the opposite side, we’re quickly ripping those opportunities away with over-protection. I want them protected and safe at school, at airports, in the home. I don’t want them terrified of engaging in life and trying new things.
It’s a delicate balance that we constantly struggle with. Do we hold them and tell them it will be alright? Or do we look at them and tell them to get up and get moving again? Studies have indicated that we should probably be doing more of the latter.
College-age students are increasingly showing signs of social anxiety – most likely (and this is an assumption) tied to coddling and to the increased use of texting and social media as the main channel for which relationships are formed or maintained.
This protection comes from wanting the best for our children, no doubt. To have it better than we did. But the graph doesn’t just go up for quality of life because time passes and we enter new decades or that the present is what we once thought of the future. We’re operating under the assumption that everything is continuously improving.
That’s just not the case. There may be more and more of everything available to us, but it cannot replace or duplicate simple values, rules and ethics that are basically self-taught.
No matter how much pain or discomfort there is, parents cannot go to a middle school dance and make everyone be nice. They can’t be there on the playground during recess. They cannot be on the field of play. And they can’t be there when a job becomes stressful or you’re working to find balance between family and a job.
It’s called growing up for a reason: it implies that you are moving upward, which is a universal sign of increasing something. In the general context, it’s education. It’s maturity. It’s becoming aware of what is socially acceptable, of the unwritten rules of our culture. It’s find out what the individual values are and how they relate to the community values around them.
And it doesn’t stop. It continues well past the age of 18 or 25. We are always learning and re-evaluating and re-applying until the very end of life. There is no manual, no how-to. Only opinion.
Which is why I’ve formed this one: we are unaware of the fact that we are becoming weaker. We don’t want the right things bad enough to risk failing or damage. We only see the possible pain – not the growth that comes after that moment or what we will learn about ourselves in either succeeding or failing.
Yoda was right. Do or do not. There is no try. The problem is, we are reaching a point where we don’t even try. We just expect someone to give it to us or to help us – we’re teaching ourselves and our children to work the systems to benefit them at every angle.
And yes, in some ways, this ties back to moving a holiday because the weather was a little wet, windy and cool.
Worried about catching a cold? Put on a coat. Frantic about a test? Study for it. Nervous about what someone might say? Ask.
There’s an old saying about prevent defense in football – it prevents you from winning. As a country, our culture has shifted into a prevent defense mode. If all the elements aren’t lined up and perfect, we pull back.
We are preventing ourselves from winning the game of life. We are preventing our children from accomplishing all the things we dream of and for them, setting up so many guardrails and safety nets that there’s little risk.
But the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Better still, the better the character and resolve.
Sometimes, the only road to ride on is gravel and you don’t have a helmet.

How bad do you want it? 
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Life, passage of time, Philosophy

In the Here & Now

Except the ticking of the clock, there are constant reminders that life is ever-constant, always changing, moving. 
As time marches on, I become more evident of it, more appreciative, more selective. 
There was the conversation where my wife and I realized our oldest son is now the same age her youngest brother was when we met and started dating. It was a discussion about Halloween costumes and how he might not dress up this year. 
That didn’t seem right, not because a sixth grader might not want to dress up – but just that we were at a point of time in his life where it was even a discussion. 
Our youngest son, and youngest child, is a precocious two-year-old and loves Scooby-Doo. So did his five-year-old brother and his seven-year-old sister. And by the end of next Thursday night, all will have worn the same Scooby-Doo costume for Halloween. 
Moments like this present themselves numerous times a day or week, specific and unique to all of us, but somehow still shared. That radio station playing a “classic” song that you remember as a new release. Ever look down at your phone and just get amazed that you’re even holding such a device?
Maybe it is just me. 
It is within our shared recollections where we probably notice it the most. Next month marks the 50th anniversary of the death of JFK. Bob Knight just turned 72. Michael Jordan is 50. 
That is when you find yourself looking around a bit more. You see the lines on your parents faces. You hear your son’s voice deepening, seemingly by day. You feel it when you first wake up in the morning, with every joint popping as you slowly get out of bed.
And you wonder, where is the time going? Like a dream, memories mount over time, but jumble together into a haze. When your five-year-old puts on a pair of cowboy boots, you recall the ones you donned in 1985. You think of the grandfather who gave them to you and how long it’s been since his passing. Memories take form in Instagram-like filters. I can see my childhood house, but the color looks like an old, not fully developed Polaroid. 

So we shake our heads, and simply ponder life for a bit. Where did the time go?
The answer is simple. 

Where it’s always gone, at the same exact pace it’s always moved. 
And you realize: this is life. Just let it sink in for a fleeting moment.

Life is watching your wife play a superhero, building a business out of motivation and passion, while multitasking 402 everyday things like homework, practice, laundry, groceries and random tasks that each day bring. Life is finding the time to steal a kiss hello or goodbye. Life is off to the races, happening in one hundred different places. 
It’s hearing your mother cry as she struggles with the toll that Alzheimer’s has taken on your grandmother. Life is being speechless, because there are no words. It is fear that you won’t know what to say the next time you see her. Or if she’ll remember you at all.
Life is seeing your child learn to read, your entire family bow their heads in prayer and read a passage from the Bible each night. It’s hearing a teacher tell you your son has been kind and compassionate, taking time at recess and in class to spend it with children who have autism and being overcome with busting pride to the point of tears. 

It’s the crisp air of fall, of picking pumpkins and baking seeds. It’s wrapping presents for your kids and playing Santa. Life is everything happening to you and around you. And it can be overwhelming trying to figure out a place in it, or how everything is effected and affected by every decision, no matter how small, that you make.

Life will go on, as it always has, at the same speed it always does. 
As the popular quote goes, when it’s over, it isn’t the dates and years of birth and death that matter. It’s that little dash in between.
That dash is life for not just you, but for everyone else in your particular life.
That dash is every Sunday morning making pancakes, every night one or all of your children end up in your bed. It’s late nights watching baseball games and sitting in traffic for 45 minutes to get to work. It’s summer vacations as a kid, break-ups and make-ups. It’s bad decisions and a clean slate. 

That dash represents every breakthrough, every smile, every tear. Every moment of anxiety, of dread, of panic, of laughter you’ll ever have.  The good and the bad, the friends you have and the ones who’ve fallen out of touch. 
Because when everyone sees that dash, it will inevitably invoke some memory or meaning. And we are remembered not for the hours worked or the production of our days, but considerably more for how we made everyone in our life feel.

Life is emotion – and in some cases, lack thereof. And that dash represents every time you smiled at someone who frowned. Every time you called and just left a quick “thinking of you” message for a friend. 

The dash is flowers for no reason, an extra hug and kiss goodbye, every “great job, I’m proud of you” spoken to eyes searching for approval. It’s held doors, holding hands, making time when you really believed there wasn’t. It’s leaving a little extra tip at dinner, going ahead and having the ice cream. It’s the extra mile you ran to get rid of the ice cream so you could be around longer. 
Time stops for no one. But the truth is that realization should bring some sense of comfort, make it easier, not harder. We can’t get any of this moment back. So worrying about what cannot be controlled, which is everything that happened to this point, is fruitless. It cannot be changed. 

And it means that the future, which hasn’t happened yet, cannot really be controlled. So that deadline at work, while important, in proper perspective, is just a blip. There will be another. And another. 
Thus, your life, your dash, becomes more about how you choose to spend it and the manner in which you spend it. Because it will be spent. This moment right now is the only thing that matters. 
Life is fickle, and it doesn’t promise answers or reasons. The more tightly we squeeze it, the less grip we have. 
So ease up. Take the time to take your time. Laugh, smile, cry, learn, love. Live your dash and make sure your dash holds as much meaning as it possibly can. 
If there were ever a time to embrace, engage and just be you, well, the here and now is better than never. Everything is both starting and ending simultaneously. 

Find that little dash in between the beginning and end of everything, because in that moment, that is where life happens.
Time can do everything but turn back, meaning we never get another chance to be in this moment. Don’t trap yourself in the past or engage solely in planning for the future. 
Because now is where you are, and if you waste it in the before and after, you miss what is. 

Life.
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