Lessons To Be Learned

If you had your television on during the last five or six weeks, it would be hard to have missed some life lessons that were taking place. We have been able to watch a variety of world-class athletes participating in the sports that they love. Thirty-two of the world’s best football (soccer) teams arrived in South Africa to participate in the World Cup. South Africa was a showcase for what can happen when people choose to work together. In the not so distant past South Africa was in the throws of the racial policy called Apartheid. The South Africans obviously have made great strides under the leadership of their new government.

Generally speaking the teams played with great congeniality. Even Spain, the winner of the World Cup, did not win all their games. We must be careful not to define them as the only winner because by doing so we create the implication that the other thirty-one teams were losers. Winning and success are not synonymous; one can be successful without winning, both in athletics and in our personal lives. While there was joy and heartbreak after every individual game, even the players who lost should not be considered losers. The games were refereed by individuals from all over the world. On the whole they did a wonderful job, but some serious errors in judgment were made by a few referees which had monumental effects on some of the teams.  Even in the heat of battle the players generally accepted these decisions with little or no protest. We should recognize that the majority of times most people are making decisions to the best of their ability. There were teams in which the star players failed to fulfill expectations and at other times different players unexpectedly stepped up.

2010 Tour Route

On July 3 another world class sporting event began. The Tour de France is a yearly event which challenges almost 200 top athletes from all over the globe to a grueling bike race which lasts 20 days and covers 3642 kilometers or a little over 2185 miles. Twenty-two teams of nine racers each put their collective and individual skills to the test. On an average day the racers cover over 100 miles.  Some stages are flat, some rolling and some are on extremely mountainous terrain.  The downhill speeds can exceed 60 miles an hour. The bikers race for personal and team success. This is a great test of human endurance both physical and mental, and if we look carefully there is much to be learned. The race presents different challenges to the participants every day. With the large number of racers moving along in tight proximity to each other there are often crashes. Effects of these can range from “road rash” to broken bones. Even racers with broken bones refused to drop out of the race. This year Cadel Evans, a rider from Australia, rode most of the way with a broken wrist. When mishaps happen to a team leader and he falls behind, his teammates drop back to help him catch back up to the group of riders. The person riding in the front of the line cuts the wind which reduces the work the riders behind him must do by as much as 40%. This is called splitstream or more commonly known as drafting.  Team members are constantly changing this front position to keep members fresh. At times racers from different teams will even do this in pursuit of a common goal. Each team has racers called domestiques who keep team members supplied with water.  They must drop back to the support cars behind the racers get a number of bottles and then sprint up to the group to hand the bottles out. Everyone works for the good of the team. In the end with the help of his team members Alberto Contador of Spain won the race. However, all the riders were successful just finishing such a grueling race.
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Racers also must deal with extreme weather conditions. Over the 21 days in the race riders often struggle with road temperatures that can reach 100°.  When they are in the mountains, temperatures can drop as much as 50° from the bottom to the top of the mountain. Often at the summit bystanders will hand them newspapers which the riders place inside their jerseys to help insulate their bodies from windchill experienced on the descent. Sometimes, individual racers will have days when they just are unable to work at professional levels. But like most of the racers on the tour they refuse to give up.

I believe there are lessons to be learned for all of us from watching these professional athletes. We can learn commitment, teamwork to achieve common goals, and refusing to allow pain and fatigue to sidetrack us from our purposes even though we could easily find an excuse to give up. My final observation would be that the challenges and subsequent lessons to be learned here are not just challenges faced by athletes but confront all people in day to day situations including people with disabilities.

All We Are

Living It Up

A while ago I saw Milery Cyrus (aka Hanna Montana) being interviewed on Good Morning America about a photo shoot she had done which was appearing in some fashion magazine. To her credit she talked about the two hours of makeup preparation prior to the shoot and the airbrushing that was done to the photos afterwards before they were ready for the magazine. She concluded by saying this process would make any individual look beautiful and sexy. This was quite a mature, candid and astute observation for such a young woman. During my 34 years of teaching I was constantly trying to help students see themselves in a more positive light. When we are subjected to negative interactions in our daily lives we tend to wonder what is the matter with us. When in reality, we should be thinking what’s wrong with the other person. We are bombarded daily with messages of what the ideal image and lifestyle for us should be. Few, if any of us, can live up to these unrealistic expectations. The majority of people seem to be less than satisfied with their physical features. This is very evident when we look at the rise in cosmetic surgery over the past few years. As Oden Black pointed out in his last blog Love You. Love Me! “We look in the mirror and see deficiencies, which are compounded by everyday negative comments and messages we receive from those around us.” Our society worships youth and perfection. How many times have you turned on the television or opened a magazine to see a celebrity who has had so much plastic surgery they are hardly recognizable. There is an additional obsession for many people to look young and in shape, and many individuals take the shortest and quickest methods available to achieve this goal such as liposuction or dangerous fad diets. If I paraphrase Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths we can begin to see a way to relieve some of this way of thinking.

Suffering is due to desire                                                                                                         

Trying to eliminating desire                                                                                                      

Will lead to a life with less suffering

Several years ago I was seeing a psychiatrist who asked me if I could identify any positive things that had come as a result of my condition. After several minutes of thought, I said I had met some wonderful people, but could think of no others. He then suggested to me that I no longer had to worry about vanity. What a ridiculous statement! If anything I’m more vain. In fairness to him, like most of the doctors I deal with, he had little experience with someone with my disability. The point I’m getting at here is that most people in society have hang ups about the way they look and the way others perceive them. So, as individuals with disabilities we are not as different from others as we may think we are. We would all be much more content and enjoy our lives much more if we accepted our physical selves the way we are and allow nature and the aging process to follow their normal courses.

As Matt Nathanson has written in his song “All We Are”

I kept falling over
I kept looking backward
I went broke believing
That the simple should be hard

‘Cause all we are we are
All we are we are
And every day is a start of something beautiful, something real

All we are we are
All we are we are
And every day is a start of something beautiful, beautiful

A Quality Day

Going..

When I woke up this morning at a quarter of six the temperature outside was 27°. Even though it is May 10th you have to expect the possibility of this kind of temperature when you live in northern New York. My nurse arrived around six and the day began. I was ready to roll a little after eight o’clock but was delayed because of a problem my nurse had loading my shotgun. Bundled up in camouflage, my wife and I finally headed out of the house. I’m fortunate to be able to hunt across the street on a large area of abandoned farm land. I motored down the driveway, across a field, down an abandoned road and drove into the field to the place where I was going to hunt. At the edge of the field I back into an area of small trees and brush. One must blend in with the surroundings because turkeys have excellent vision and can spot anything out of place. Marge helped me with some final adjustments, covered my head with camouflage netting and left. Fifteen or twenty minutes after she left intermittently I began calling the turkeys. Turkeys call back and forth to locate each other during the mating season. Although it was cold with a brisk wind, it was a beautiful sun shiny day. Back in the hedgerow there was little wind and it wasn’t long before I could feel the warm rays of sun on my face.

going...

After a while I became aware of a bird jumping around from branch to branch.  A minute or two later it landed on my shotgun barrel and stayed for about 30 seconds. It was Black-capped Chickadee. They are cute and entertaining little birds. I glanced at its feet gripping the barrel of the shotgun. How can anything be so delicate? Even though we can have brutal winters, Chickadees are year-round residents. After it flew off I called a couple more times. Slowly my eyes began to close and I nodded off in the warm sunshine. When I awoke again the grass in the field was bending in the wind, as were the trees and bushes directly across from me, every shade of green rocking in the wind. I heard the raucous call of a crow. It kept repeating and each time after it was done I listened intensely for a gobble that never came. Often in the early spring during the mating season male turkeys will gobble when crows are calling. Again I became aware of movement in the bushes around me. This time it was a pair of Wood Thrushes who were also involved with the spring mating ritual. They have one of the most beautiful calls of the early spring morning but these two had other things on their mind.

gone

Sitting in the warm sunshine calling, nodding and watching, the morning passed quickly. I soon heard my wife’s voice as she arrived to walk me home. The hunting time ends at noon each day and Marge insists on walking me back home. Tomorrow is another day. Oh, by the way, I didn’t see or hear any turkeys, but it was only noon and I had already had a quality day. At one point during my recovery I never thought I would enjoy a day like this again.

Wishes and Daydreams

Both of my nurses have children graduating from high school this year. My primary nurse has been with me for almost 11 years now. Her children are almost like grandchildren to my wife and me. It is her son Devin who’s graduating. When he was young we used to play together. Over the years he has done work around our house, has stayed with me overnight when my wife was away (we call it Adult Sitting) and I’ve watched him grow up. He is a fine young man, as well as a good soccer player and I’ve seen him play a number of times. Devin will be going into the United States Navy, after graduation, and will train to be corpsman.

I’m envious! He’s young and I’m old. He’s got his life ahead of him; most of mine is behind me. He’s fit and I am not. I want to be him, young, healthy, virile with so much to look forward to. Just the other night I was thinking it is too bad life doesn’t begin at old age and go backward to childhood. However, wishing and daydreaming isn’t going to change my situation. But what it does do is help me look at my life and put things in perspective. People come and go every day and little changes in the grand scheme of things. All this is wishful thinking, I guess, but the reality is only the earth goes on. It reminds me of part of the Serenity Poem which was stuck on a bulletin board in the kitchen at my best friend’s house.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference. *                                                                               

*Reinhold Niebuhr

So, all things considered, what is the lesson to be learned? Deal in reality, enjoy your life as it is, change what you can and take time each day to smell the roses. We are not here very long so we should make the best of our situation.

Senior Year 2010

Senior Year 1961