DO WHAT MATTERS BECAUSE YOU MATTER

When you find yourself asking ‘what really matters anymore’ the correct answer is ‘You matter,’ which isn’t a problem until you start doing weird shit to prove it.

Like what? Look around, get the news, and some days it seems like there’s an effort being made to make you feel like you don’t matter.

How do you work with that kind of feeling?

The same way you did when you got a hit, stole a base, and scored a run in a Little League baseball game.

You were supposed to strike out against a good pitcher? Nice try.

Well, we’re a long way from little league now.

Some of us have had kids in little league working their way into the starting nine before deciding baseball wasn’t their game.

We gave them an “attaboy” and found another sport to help make them matter to themselves.

I didn’t care what game they played as long as they did it with enthusiasm.

I saw my part as protecting participation from overzealous men correcting their own scrubby, misspent, childhoods by acting like every practice, every game, was their own personal World Series, their Final Four, their Super Bowl, their Olympic Moment.

Like most normal people of my generation I never played soccer. I remember the girls playing Field Hockey in PE, but no soccer. No soccer club, no Elite Soccer, no Classic Soccer.

What to do when soccer for the kids started in kindergarten? And the coach thought he had a World Cup team?

After watching from the sidelines that first season, watching the sporting spirit flag, the coach huffing and puffing, I learned soccer and coached it for the next twenty years.

That’s my soccer season math: If daddy coaches two fall soccer teams for five years, and two indoor soccer teams for five years, that’s twenty seasons. Am I right?

Add coaching two teams of basketball, and free advice during ten seasons of football and wrestling and I’ve had quite the coaching career.

Do I have my 30 Year watch? Nooooo.

Why did I bother? Because I saw teams run by bad coaches with bad personalities, saw the kids take a beatdown look, and thought ‘you matter enough to do something.’

The truth is I didn’t do much, and didn’t have to; I had a great assistant. (Hey John)

 

Then Everyone Grew Up

Today all of the kids are in their mid to late thirties.

Some are married with kids of their own, some not.

Every one of them turned out smart, some more than others.

I can look out there and see what Bob Dylan saw:

 

All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenters’ wives
Don’t know how it all got started
I don’t know what they’re doin’ with their lives

 

I’ve seen their ups and downs, the wins, the success, the hope and love.

Like every generation, they’ve experienced over-doses, suicides, and failure.

A dad takes a walk in the woods and gets carried out in a bag.

School counselors help the kids understand and process the loss.

A few years later a counselor’s kid died and it didn’t seem real.

But, it got real when my parents and in-laws all passed.

Very real, like ‘who’s next’ real, which is a good motivation to get on with things you plan on doing.

If, like the writer, you’re fastest mile time is behind you at 5:58 (downhill,) your best bench is back there at 280 lbs (x 1.5), and the spring in your jump has sprung, what are you gonna do?

Keep stepping out with an even pace, keep lifting weights, and keep stretching.

Prove that you matter. But to who? For what?

The recent space fliers reported back with what all astronauts supposedly say after seeing earth from the vantage point of space, the final frontier.

Earth appears different from the other dead-looking planets and moons with a slim glow around the perimeter called our atmosphere.

Not warring nations or loud religious accusations or wing nut fuck-sticks telling their fans they only matter if they comply with them, but a fragile orb spinning in the infinite darkness of eternity.

Earth matters more to them as they power their way back home.

 

This Is When You Learn Big Lessons

You’re staring down a dark tunnel and see a light and rejoice.

Then you see another tunnel after that, and happiness turns to WTF?

This is the test of whether or not you matter as much as you think.

Or as little.

In this situation you have choices.

Turning around is one, keep going another.

Stopping after the first tunnel is one, going to the next another.

Then what?

Turning around in the first tunnel and going back the way you came is a good choice, a safe choice.

You want to be there for others and the risk is not worth some uncertain reward.

Or, keep going because you always keep forging ahead and brave people will automatically follow.

Doesn’t that sound like an adventure?

Not so much if you stop in the space between, which might be a temporary purgatory brought on by indecision.

Then what?

That’s how you know you matter. You can decide for yourself.

You degrade yourself and diminish those around you when you don’t make any decision other than to jump into some shit-wagon that rolls past with a driver explaining how it’s not shit and you shouldn’t say it’s shit even though you know shit from shinola.

“If my shit-faced friend says it’s not shit, who am I to disagree? He’s knows better than I, and I know better than you.”

“This is shit.”

“Watch your mouth. You better watch your mouth.”

“Or what, I’ll eat shit?”

“Yes, you might.”

 

PS:

People in a cult drink the kool-aid when told to drink the kool-aid. Those are the cult rules.

“Mmm Mmm, that’s some mighty good kool-aid. I think I’ll lie down.”

PSS:

I asked Google AI if people were shot at Jonestown.

 

Yes, people were shot at Jonestown on November 18, 1978.

While over 900 people died primarily from cyanide poisoning in a mass murder-suicide, armed guards surrounded the pavilion to enforce the poisoning, and some people were shot or forced to take poison at gunpoint.

 

Here’s my worry: Do people in a cult get deprogrammed and end up in a deprogramming cult?

Or do they go Jonestown if offered a chilled glass of grape Flavor Aid?

You matter more than that.

If you don’t know, now you know.