Eat your heart out Bon Jovi

There aren’t many times in your life where you get to play the hero. This was one of those few, shining moments. Let’s ignore the fact that this is division two, intramural, coed softball. That’s not what’s important. What’s important is this: with two batters left to go, we are down by three runs. Elimination is at stake. This was is for all the marbles.

Enter Chelsea Mazar. With ice water in her veins, she coolly steps to the plate knowing that for us to win, she cannot make an out. Like a seasoned combat veteran, nothing could faze her. With the team counting on her for its every breath, she heroically lined a single into center, plating two runs and bringing us within one. And so the plot thickens.

With Chelsea on first base, up I walk to the plate knowing that she has to score for us to tie, and my run equals victory. With the left side of the outfield playing just shy of Riverwoods, it would take a laser guided missile to get it over their heads. With right field virtually open, I take my shot. Swinging at a pitch that should have been ignored like a door to door salesman, I lined the ball to right. As soon as I hit it, I knew we had lost. The other team’s right fielder stood poised to catch the liner and end our season. But this is why they play the games. Whether it was the sun, nerves, fate smiling upon us, or the fact that the right fielder just sucked, the ball caromed off the glove and it was as if we had received a last second pardon from the governor.

I raced around first, exhorting Chelsea with all the breath I could muster that she needed to score. As she rounded the bag at third, the ball flew into the infield. It was one of those beautiful moments where you are calculating the distance of the runner from the plate, the fielder from the runner, and determining what is to happen as the play unfolds before your eyes. It appeared to me, the exhausted runner between second and third, that she was going to come up just short.

With the flip of the ball from the cutoff man to the catcher, our season would come up ten feet short. But the throw never came. Instead, the relay man decides that a throw to the female catcher is too risky. He decides that he can run to the plate and tag Chelsea before her foot touches safety. He gambled, and he lost. Both players arrived at the same instant, and in a cloud of dust, I could see the outstretched arms of the umpire signaling that we had just tied the game.

The other team was furious. The fielder thought he had her. His outrage transforms him instantly from softball player to irate defense attorney. As he argued his team’s case, I realized that he had forgotten all about me. If I could sneak in amidst the fracas, we steal a win that should not have been ours. I go for it. Halfway home I’m praying that this guy is too caught up in his argument inches from home plate to see me coming. Thankfully, he realizes what is happening too late, and the look of shock on his face as I slide safely across home is priceless. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Against all odds, we’re still alive and well. Just living on a prayer.

Change We Can Believe In

I hate making decisions. Not only do I hate making them, but when I do, I make bad decisions. This is a problem for many reasons, the most important of which being that it seems like there are so many decisions that I need to be making these days: where to live, who to live with, what to do with my life, what to do short term, what to do long term, when to make my move on Janna, where to go to grad school, what to study, etc. Potentially, there is a whole platter of decisions that I can spill all over the proverbial customer’s lap.

I was watching a classic episode of Friends about a week ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. In the episode, Rachel tries to counter the fact that she makes terrible decisions by appointing Monica to make all of her decisions for her. This also corresponds with a great episode of Seinfeld. Hapless George has an epiphany where he realizes that every decision he has ever made has been wrong. He takes a different approach to the issue, and decides that all of his instincts are wrong, and that by doing the opposite of what he would normally do, he would effectively neutralize his bad judgment. This promptly lands him a beautiful woman and a front office job with the New York Yankees.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m ready to learn from the popular culture I have enjoyed for so long. No longer will I make all my decisions based on the sound advice of Oprah and those chatty women from the view. From here on out, I am taking a page out of the Book of Rachel and the Words of Costanza. Here’s what’s going to happen: I will be fielding open suggestions from anyone who has ideas on how I should proceed with my future. Fear not. No idea is too simple and no suggestion can be too ridiculous. Feel free to give short term as well as long term advice. I am willing to listen to anyone, as long as the idea does not originate in my head.

Now here is the tricky part. I have to decide which advice to take. This is where George comes in. Not only am I trying to avoid ever making another decision, a la Rachel Green, but on those rare occasions where a decision must be left to me, I will have to be ready to do the exact opposite of what would appear to be the correct choice. Difficult? Yes. But I’m committed to change. Just call me Barrack.

I need your help people. Me being in charge of my own life has been an utter disaster. With your help, I can make the progress that will lead me into the next phase of my life. Vote for change in ’08. Vote for my future.

Yes we can. Yes we can.

The Heart of Life

Life is good. I don’t know if I express that enough, but I want to state this emphatically: life is good.

Don’t get me wrong. Life is hard. Sometimes pain throws your hope to the ground. One of my friends just had his heart broken a few weeks ago. At times like that, it’s easy to think that things will never be good again, and that all innocence in life is lost. It was this very same pining and sense of loss that led Paul Simon to pen, “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio. A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” He was longing for a time when things were simple and beautiful, and he turned to his father’s baseball icon, a man that had retired 16 years earlier. There have been many times that I’ve found myself yearning for the peace and serenity of the past. It is so easy to live in the past and plot out the perfect way things should have happened. But dealing with pain in the present is the only way to look forward to a bright future.

We all experience pain. Nobody escapes its path. But that is not what brings us together. What brings us together as one is our goal: everyone is just looking for love. Love heals all wounds. Love gives us hope. Love turns the whole thing around. It is impossible to experience love without feeling that there is a purpose to this life. No it won’t all go the way it should, but I know the heart of life is good.

At times, this must be our mantra. If you say it enough, it becomes impossible to forget. Life is good. What about those times when you think you can’t go on? Especially then. Say it. Chant it. Believe it. These are the times when we need to be the strongest, because believe me; bad news never had good timing.

It’s important to have great friends. I can’t imagine going through life without close friends to share it with. It would all be so meaningless. I love my friends. They’ve been with me through the best and worst times of my life, and that is what matters. Great friends foster hope, and help us remember everything that we love about life. Even if everything else is crashing down, the circle of your friends will defend the silver lining. They help us see the good that is there, but possibly hiding at the moment.

I’m terrified of the future. I don’t know what it holds. But life is good, and that keeps me going. After all, fear is a friend who’s misunderstood. It’s a wonderful motivator. I’ve never prepared harder than the times that I was the most afraid to fail. I’ve never worked harder than those moments when I knew there was someone that I couldn’t let down. You just can’t let the fear overcome you. Trust that things will work out, and then work to make sure they do. Believe in people. Don’t be afraid of the unknown.

And know that the heart of life is good.

The Emporers New Clothes

I think a great way to disarm people is by using self deprecating humor. I really enjoy this technique and those who practice it. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I’ve got a few theories. First, I can’t stand people who take themselves too seriously. It has always rubbed me the wrong way. If the only reason someone thinks you are smart, important, or great in any way is that you tell them, something is wrong. I’ve absolutely loved my time at BYU, but if I had one complaint, it would be the ridiculous desire and need many feel to self promote, especially with the opposite sex. I guess I would call this the Marriott School mentality. Guys know what girls want to hear, and many forgo humility in an attempt to build themselves up into the image that most girls are looking for. You would think that this would be so easy to see through that it wouldn’t work. You would be wrong. And in the world of only having 1-3 dates to convince someone you are worth spending time with, this often means that the self promoting toolsheds of the world are often successful in this regard.

The second reason is that I’ve always thought people couldn’t make fun of you, or talk trash you behind your back as long as you were up front and honest about your shortcomings. Have you ever seen 8 mile? At the end of the movie, Eminem realizes that the other guy he is battle rapping against has a myriad of bullets to use against him in their verbal duel. So what does he do? He cuts him off before he can even get started. He throws all of those things about himself that might be embarrassing out in the open right away, and the other guy gets up and realizes that it would be lame to use any of those things now, so he quits and Eminem is victorious. I think I actually started doing this in middle school. Now, I fully admit that this can be done to unhealthy levels, but when kept in moderation, it is a wonderfully disarming characteristic.

The problem with using this as a defense mechanism, especially in a BYU/Utah culture where self promotion is often the rule, is that people have to be open minded in order make accurate judgments about your character. If someone is expecting Muhammad Ali’s “I am the greatest” speech and gets the “aw, shucks” routine instead, you might think they have a lack of confidence. Think about a job interview. One of the questions that is always asked, is what do you feel are some of your flaws, or some variation of that question. It is widely accepted that this is an excuse for you to pretend like something is a flaw, when it is actually strength. “I really just am too focused on what I am doing sometimes and I can’t stop until it’s done. It’s a problem.” Or, “I just care too much.” These are the BS answers that employers have come to expect. What would happen if you were honest with them? “I am really not a morning person and sometimes it’s just really hard to get up and out of bed.” This is probably true of the general population, but would be absolutely unacceptable to say. Why? Because nobody tells the truth in these situations and being honest about a problem that most share doesn’t just leave you in the middle of the pack, in puts you at the back.

I have a friend who didn’t take a prep course to take the LSAT. This is really the way it should be. The test should be a measurement of how well your mind works at answering the questions provided. Sadly, it has become the norm to pay someone to teach you how to do the test well. This makes it so that in order to be on equal footing with everyone else, you have to pay 800 or 1000 bucks to do well. Luckily, my friend is extremely smart and was able to rock the test on her own. She is the kind of student law schools are looking for. Kaplan and Ace have made it so that top schools end up with the students who do the best on the LSAT, not necessarily who would be the best law school candidate.

I was in a ward soon after I got off my mission where many of the guys would often get up to bear their testimony about how much they loved to serve, and help people. One guy in particular would get up every month and gush about how much he loved people, and how much he loved to serve. He would rattle on for 10 minutes about wanting to help anyone, even if it was in the middle of the night, and how nothing made him happier than doing service for those in the ward. He quickly gained a reputation for being the hard working, service guy. The funny thing is that he did absolutely nothing. He was supposed to have home taught my friends all year, and he never came. When we had ward service projects, he would show up and talk to girls the entire time and accomplish nothing productive. But to my dismay, at the end of the year who do you think people thought of when it came to service?

Perception versus reality. Is perception reality? It saddens me to say that I think it usually is. What irritates me the most is when this is even true among friends. I was devastated recently to learn that someone who I considered one of my best friends was bagging on me and ripping me in a way that I never thought someone close to me would. The ammo was easy to find. It was the stuff that I joke about publicly all the time. You would think that the people that know you best would look past the self deprecation and lack of self promotion. The worst thing about finding that out was it makes me think, if this person that I absolutely trusted would do that, who else would?

But then again, I guess if people think something is true, it must be. Sad day for me.