orelse

That is one of my favorite Jimmy Buffett songs and I tend to listen to him when I get down.  Not that I was down this weekend but I also wasn’t up to my usual smart ass slef anyway.  This weekend was good but I wasn’t exactly honest to myself or my program.  I went off the chain somewhat and ate things I should not have eaten.  But the flip side of that coin is, I didn’t eat in between meals and for me that is a good thing.  It is hard to keep on course all the time and I think when we get a little sideways we need to be tolerant of that.  We do not need to brow beat ourselves and get all gloomy.  After all, aren’t we human?  We are not perfect in any manner so why do we expect perfection?  If you have the answer let me know.  Besides I am not so certain I want to be perfect, I kind of like being imperfect.  It keeps a lot of stress out of my life.

Ran into an old friend not long ago and we got to talking about when we was kids and about how life revoloved around baseball and that we was good at it.  Not bragging just stating facts.  The two of us was probably the best of our time.  I was a second baseman and he played the outfield.  We both hit over 300 our last season in Little League with 8 home runs and 12 RBI’s.  Not bad for 12 yeara olds.  That summer we was near perfection.  We did little wrong and was treated as Gods on the field.  My friend even had a snow cone named after him.  Which is a mighty big thing for a kid.  However, the following year was not as nice to us.  We was both recruited by the number one and 2 Senior League teams.  Great things was expected of us.  I replaced the second baseman who was 16 and had been playing there for several years.  I was not liked but there was not much I could do.  My friend made the starting list as centerfield and we both batted in the clean up position.  Sadly, our debut was less than standard.  We hoovered!  We both felt that we could live on last summers dreams and achievements.   Oh how we was so wrong!By the third game I was collecting splinters on the bench and my friend was moved to batting 7th.  Later that season he was also benched.  I sometimes batted for the pitcher and was usually chosen to pinch run for our catcher.  Life was less than grand and it was exteremly humbling.  But life lesson was, “You are only as good as your last game!”  A acouple of years later with some grooming to play big boys baseball I was back to my usual style.  Snagging hard hit grounders like Brook Robinson and hitting like Henry Aaron.  My last year was spectacular, hitting over 400, 22 home runs and 35 RBI’s.  I was once again a God.  My friend, he took a fast ball early in the season and was sidelined with a fractured hip.  Whichin turned saved his life he was diagonosed with a rare form of bone cancer in the early stages.  He is obviously fine now as we was talking about 5 days ago.

Living for yesterday doesn’t cut it.  We can’t turn the hands of time back nor should we try.  All we have is today that is certain, tomorrow isn’t promised to us.  So what happened over the weekend doesn’t matter anymore.  It is what happens TODAY and TODAY only that counts.  I went off the reservation this weekend but I can’t and wont let it affect me today.  That is not an option I am willing to give myself.  You shouldn’t either.  The only thing from our past that should influence our present and our future is our wins and loss collumns.  Oh wait isn’t that a contridiction you say.  I say NOPE, it isn’t.  We need to use our wins and our loss’es as measuring sticks.  We are winners, regardless but we need to try and be bigger winners (not whinners or weiners) each day needs to be better than the previous.  We need to learn from our loss’es so we will not travel down that road again.  So next time when we incounter the same or similar situation we can come out a WINNER!  But it all boils down to one thing, US!  Are we willing to live today?  Are we willing to forget about the past and not dwell on it from a  “poor ol me” point of view?  We had better be otherwise, well I think you know the outcome. 

Alright I will shut up now.  So keep the past close but don’t dewell, keep the future in sight but don’t try and live in there and above all, keep the PRESENT in your grasp.  Don’t live for yesterday or for tomorrow, Live for TODAY!  See ya around the watercooler.