Category Archives: The Meaning of Life

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.
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12.21.12, 2012, Dec 21, faith, The Meaning of Life

It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Don’t Feel Fine)


We’re nearly there.
Dec. 21, 2012.
The supposed date the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world. The date that many (non-mainstream) scholars say that something biblical might happen. A day which might be the dawn of a new era.
So we’ve had movies made about this date. People have joked about this date – my favorite was the joke that Hostess was in on the end of the world, which is why we briefly lost Twinkies and Ho-Hos. Some people are secretly fearful of this date, they just don’t want to admit it.
Despite the fact that no credible scientists, astronomers, historians or scholars support the theory of the world coming to an end next Friday (no, really, anyone with any credibility calls it hogwash), let’s play the game: let’s say it happens.
Are you ready?
Are you ready to meet your maker? Did you do everything you want? Have you lived life to its absolute fullest? I doubt it. I certainly have not. Because we rarely reach 100 percent. We talk of giving 110 percent, but really, we never approach it. There is always more that can be done or given.
As humans, we operate under the assumption that there is always time. It may be finite in the sense we know that we are going to die, but we don’t know when that will be and we always perceive it to be in the distant future. If we’re 10, it’s something like 1,000 years away.
At 20, we think we’re barely a quarter of the way through life. At 30, we know it’s lingering, but it’s only around 11:00am in the day of our life. At 60, we know it’s dinner time, but there’s still so much to do before bed.
And I would surmise that even at the end, for most, there’s a feeling right up until they die that there is still a little bit of time left, another day, another hour, another minute to do something.
Five days after the supposed end of the world, I’ll turn 33. That’s my basketball jersey number from high school. And in high school, I thought about how both young and old that number sounded as an age. It was so far away – fifteen years! What would I do in fifteen years?
The question should have been, what will I do with fifteen years? Because the choice was entirely up to me.
It doesn’t necessarily matter how it was spent, just the fact it was spent. It’s gone and I can never get it back. Some years I don’t want back, they were perfect. Other years, I’d do over. Then I break it down further.
How about the months? The days? The hours? How about you? Care for any do-overs?
Well, too bad, you can’t have them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t change how you spend  the future.
We’re an extremely strange bunch. We spend minutes waiting, hours wasting, days gone, months pass and become years.
I’ve read the famous poem, The Dash. And I’ve read “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss. And I’ve certainly read many passages of the Bible. All evoke feeling, emotion and reaction. I’ve heard great motivational speakers and felt, well, motivated. And I have been depressed by watching friends, family and even myself waste precious time. That can be motivating too.
But watching others or listening to the success or problems of others doesn’t actually change me or you. We are the only ones who can do that ourselves.
All of it adds up to life. It’s unpredictable. We can never know what’s in store. Our faith can have us believe without question that there is a heaven without knowing what it is like. We don’t need to see a million dollars to know it’s real. We have faith that something either exists or it doesn’t. Likewise, the absence of faith can have believe that there is nothing after we’re gone.
One is comforting, the other, wildly depressing. But neither is known as pure fact and truth.
That, in essence is life. We either believe or we don’t. We either believe we can do better and become more, or we don’t. We either believe in heaven or we don’t. We mangle life with shades and gray and nuance, but really, it’s black and white.
Happiness is derived from a feeling of joy, not by an action. Nothing technically makes you happy – you feel that way. Watching a ballgame and going on a date with my wife elicit a feeling of happiness. In turn, nothing makes you sad – you feel that way. A sick child elicits a reaction of compassion and pain, which qualifies as sadness because it’s an emotion.
It’s all perspective and outlook. It’s how the death of a loved one is seen by some as a release to a greater place, should they be of a resounding faith and belief. To others, it’s the loss and how it impacts their life and the sadness by not being able to see, touch or be with them.
This difference in perspective is how Bo Jackson shrugged off his devastating hip injury and went on with life and found something else to do. The most remarkable and gifted athlete of perhaps all time, who could literally do almost anything, found something else to do in his early 30s. Because there was more to do.
The opposite perspective is how some people reach a point where ending their life is the only possible outcome: there’s nothing else to do.
So ask yourself how you feel about Dec. 21, 2012, if it were true. Or ask yourself what if your world ends in six months, six years or 66 years. The less time there is, the more we try to do. Why not the opposite? Why not with more time, don’t we resolve ourselves to do more?
Because there’s time, right? Except that we don’t know that as truth or fact. We’re assuming. And assumptions cannot be validated.
Whether or not you believe that on Friday, December 21, 2012 the world will end or not, ask yourself the question if you are ready.
I would venture to say 99.8 percent of us are not. And that’s because we aren’t wired that way.
For me, in a spiritual sense, I am ready, though not prepared – if that makes any sense. I am content with whatever my fate may be. But I’m not ready to go. I want to do more with my wife and children. I want more time with them – time that I already miss or waste, and time that I will miss in the future. I want to see more places. I want to do different things. I’m not even close to prepared for all that I want to do.
The thing is, I may never be. If my last breath occurs at 121 years old, I doubt I’d be ready. Because we make choices, forced or not, of how we will spend our time. There’s no multitasking life. We choose what we do with our time, our seconds, our minutes, our hours, our days, months and years.
There is a trade-off. For everything we do, there is something we did not. For whomever we marry or choose to be with, there are thousands of options we’re taking off the table. Those that are certain that they were destined to be with that person don’t even think about these other options. I believe, without question, my wife and I were meant for each other, therefore, there is nothing missed in all the other possibilities, because they weren’t possible to begin with.
It’s the classic “grass is greener” concept. For everything we choose to do, there are thousands of other possibilities.
Or are there? What if we’re meant to do exactly what we’re doing at any given moment? Kind of frees you up to enjoy and just simply be, doesn’t it?
Yet no matter what, life will end at some point, with us thinking we have another day, another hour, another minute to do something else.  
Are you ready? Better yet, will you ever be? Can you ever be ready for what you can’t really prepare for?
Forget Dec. 21, 2012, how about Dec. 23, 2021? Or June 18, 2034? What will we do with whatever we have left? Can we get it all done in time?
Probably not.
But we can damn sure try.
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Five for Fighting, The Meaning of Life

The Meaning

Typically, I write about sports and only sports. But I just can’t let this go without sharing it. Driving to work today, I heard the song “100 Years” by Five for Fighting. And it got me thinking, which is always dangerous, what is the meaning of life. I’ve been five for a moment, 18 for a moment, 23 for a moment and now 31 for what feels like an even briefer moment. But how does it all connect to construe a meaning?
And you’re thinking sarcastically, simple question right?
It’s a question that often times goes beyond any religion and one that has made men from Plato to Nietzsche devote much of their lives to finding the answer.
Not that I’m about to do that, but I’ve recently realized that I’ve spent way too much time being an introspective individual, consumed with finding answers and figuring things out in terms of how they relate to me. I obsess over stats and information. I have to know.
I record Jeopardy! and watch it almost nightly with my wife. It’s a win-win for my personality, which is obsessed with knowing about, well, everything. If I know an answer, it proves to me that knowledgeable. If I don’t know the answer, then I figure I’m learning what the answer is.
My obsession with knowing probably speaks to why I majored in History, why I am obsessed with sports, records and stats, why I consider Disney World a Modern Marvel and why I think Dr. Seuss was brilliant in making the big stuff seem so simple to understand.
I have a scary memory, in the sense that I can vividly recall moments in my life with great precision.
I can remember waiting for the Dumbo ride with my dad in Disney World as a 3-year-old. To me, it was great. In reality, it was 150 minutes of insufferable Florida humidity for my dad, who’s only hope was to probably get a 10-second smile from his only child.
As a five-year-old, I can remember believing that Indiana was the greatest place in the world. At 18, I thought it was the worst. But when I was little, we lived on three acres in the country and I would sprint from the back deck of our house to the woods at the back of the property. I remember setting off fireworks on Independence Day from this water well that stuck out of the ground. I remember the white and blue metal swing set and the sandbox that set off to its right. I remember my room, the open windows and the summer breeze and the cloth green covered toy box in my closet.
I remember going out on Halloween with my parents best friends, Steve and Pam, and their boys, Jonathon and Jeremy, who for a long time were like siblings to me. Once, Jonathon swallowed too much fake blood through his Werewolf mask and we had to cut the night short. I didn’t care, I was hanging out with older boys that I looked up to and thought my Voltron costume was cool.
We took trips to Florida (again, Disney World) with that same family many times in my early life. I remember riding in the back of the gold and tan van my parents owned, as my dad and Steve traded driving shifts with their 80s man perms. I remember how Jeremy and Jonathon would try to get me to pick which one of them was my favorite, all as Alabama’s “40 Hour Week” played on the radio as we drove through Tennessee and Georgia. I remember that making me feel very important. And I certainly remember everyone groaning when I had to go to the bathroom again while we were driving.
I ended up going in a empty Pepsi can most of the time or else we still might be on the road.
I remember where we stayed on those trips and I remember buying a set of squeaky toys from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for my brother who never came due to a miscarriage. And I can remember finding the box with the toy in my parents closet years later as I was searching for a pair of my dads shoes. Even in a painful memory, I remembered upon finding it the joy of picking out that gift with my mom.
Why would I remember all of that? Some of it is significant and some of it isn’t, right?
I’m starting to believe all of it is.
My parents were and are wonderful people and I love them dearly. My dad would take me wood chopping in the fall, and we planted these pine trees on that three-acre ground that were watered nearly every night after dinner in the spring, summer and fall. I would ride around on the water tank and turn it on and off at each tree while my dad drove his orange and navy blue Kabota tractor. He coached me in every sport and never missed a game in my sports life from age 6-18.
My mom let my imagination run wild, with toys scattered everywhere. It’s the kind of thing you do with an only child – you let them leave their toys just where they are, for days on end, because they are telling a story to themselves through play. She always made my favorite foods and let me put mustard on everything – which became a running joke with Steve, Pam, Jonathon and Jeremy. Though they protested at the noise at times, I played Nerf basketball at all hours.
What does that tell me? I have no idea.
But I remember.
I not only remember, but am deeply intrigued with significance of these events in my life. What do they tell me about the Meaning of Life?
Perhaps it’s not quite so complicated. As the great Dr. Seuss once said, sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
At 18, I went off to college thinking I was going to conquer the world, as most probably do. But within three weeks, I was back home, licking my wounds and feeling like I lost my identity without sports. I remember feeling lost, lonely and devastated. Slowly, I discovered who I was over the course of about five years without even knowing it.
I got into a music phase and listened to the Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Bob Seger and so many others because I remembered hearing them play on old records when I was little. I grew out my hair. I cut if off. I nearly went to college in Florida.
I met a family of boys who were sports and movie junkies and they became as close to brothers as I might ever get. We’ve shared so many meaningless meaningful memories – yes, a tongue twister that adequately describes what happens when you drive to Wal-Mart at 3:00am to buy a fake wrestling belt in order to prove who was the best trampoline wrestler – that I’ll share those bonds for life. Weddings, babies, fantasy football drafts, a trip to Fenway Park. Two of them are godfathers to my children. We got poison ivy from rope swinging in to ponds. I can recall falling asleep to movies like Rambo at 2:00am, which is difficult to do, falling asleep to machine gun fire on a TV. This past Independence Day, we nearly blew ourselves up setting off fireworks next to a gas tank. (Yeah, we’re idiots.)
But it has to mean something that I remember all that, right?
After years of struggling with what my purpose and the meaning of life was, I nearly had a breakdown when I was 23. I remember praying to God one night, alone in my apartment, that whatever was keeping me from meeting my future, I would give everything away to feel complete. I’m not that much of a crier, but that night in the middle of the summer, with the moon shining through my bedroom window, I balled for an hour. I’d never felt more alone.
The next morning, I decided that I’d just stop thinking about it. Whatever life brought was what God wanted. I couldn’t make anything happen – as had been proven through time, as it seemed as though all my plans failed.
About three weeks later, I changed my major to History. Instead of doing what I thought I was supposed to do and worrying that it would take me another year to graduate college, I did what felt natural and what I liked. I had some literature handed to me on my way into campus one day about the Peace Corps. I never told a single person, but I applied and wanted to go. My first class of the semester, a few weeks later, I walked in excited about reading and writing for 16 straight weeks and thinking about my potential for finally making a difference by joining the Peace Corps.
A beautiful blonde entered the room and sat down in the next row. All I know is that I will never forget the feeling I got when she walked in. For two months, I sat behind her and flirted/pestered her. I’ll never forget talking to her until 2:00am on the phone for weeks on end, with CMT as our soundtrack. I’ll never forget meeting her 18-month-old son and feeling…complete. I’d never felt more whole. I never went to the Peace Corps and threw the application away.
I won’t forget feeling heartsick and lonely on a cruise ship on a family vacation after the girl and I been dating for a couple months. I felt bad being 23 years old and moping around in front of my parents on a vacation that they’d wanted to take with me for years, but every time I looked at the Caribbean Ocean, I saw her eyes. I must have spent $100 that week to use the ship’s computers in order to e-mail her from Grand Cayman and Cancun and all the water in between.
When I finally saw her real eyes at the airport upon our return, it was all over for me. Within weeks, we were talking about getting married. I’m certain people thought we were crazy.
And we were. We still are.
She was and is my soul mate. And she has been my wife for six years.
She is my best friend and understands me like no one else and we share little moments that mean something, though I can’t pinpoint what that something is. The other night, we stayed up watching “The Horror of Dracula,” a late 1950s horror movie. I loved it. She probably loved it because I did. It was amazing because we were watching this old movie together, creating a shared moment in the time of our relationship.
The 18-month-old I met when I was 23 is now a nine-year-old, straight-A student who excels in baseball and football. We’ve bonded over sports and spend more time driving in the car to a game or practice than anything else. He told me the other night he was sorry I had to stand in the cold and wind for two hours at his football practice. I told him it was fine, because I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. All I could think about was the beauty of the fall leaves and sun setting in the background of his practice. There’s something about the feeling of watching him run around on a baseball or football field that I will never forget, even if he stops playing tomorrow.
And my wife and I have added three more children.
Our five-year-old daughter, Brielle, is as beautiful as her mother. And she’s going to break my heart.
Every night, she climbs in our bed. She’s been doing this for several years and every morning I wake up telling myself that last night is the last night I can handle her knees in my back. But she’s been sleeping on my chest since she was five days old and it brings me as much comfort as it does her. I can already see myself as a 50-year-old man, giving her away at her wedding and that feeling of her sleeping in our room will wash over me. Most certainly, I will cry like I’ve never cried before.
Our wild, crazy, three-year-old son, Dryden, lights up every room, either with his smile or with his Buzz Lightyear toys. He has my imagination and gets so involved in playing that I can see the fantasy he has created in his mind. One minute, he’s a pirate aboard a make believe ship on the play set in our backyard, the next he’s racing Matchbox cars or driving his Jeep to work.
Our newest is a three-week old son, Brooks, who has red hair and sounds like a lamb every time he makes a noise. His eyes are curious and he’s already moving his neck around to take a look around.
Part of me can’t wait to see what they become, what they do and how I can help them through it all. Part of me wants to wait, wants it to slow down. Just so I can remember it all.
They repeat, “Goodnight, Daddy, I love you” 400 times before I am permitted to leave the room. And I say, “Goodnight, I love you” 400 times back. They sing along to the Beatles and watch Back to the Future.
And I will remember that.
That all has to mean something, right? I’m almost certain it does.
Life isn’t about one thing in particular. It’s a collection of moments, snapshots in time; an accumulation of time that represents who we are and what we love, enjoy, treasure and value. In some ways, I’ll always be a boy. I have an uncanny ability to compartmentalize memories that define what the meaning of my life is.
So this is the conclusion I’ve come up with: The Meaning of Life is like Jeopardy! – I know some things. I know what I love. I know what I enjoy. I know the things I treasure and value.
And if I don’t know the answer, then I’m learning what the answer is. 

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