Another Trip Around the Sun

Eldest posted a picture in the family text chat thread today:

He added this pithy inquiry: “Happy birthday pater familias. Do you have any wisdom for us?”

It is, in fact, my birthday today, so, of course, I am pondering time. I have no claim to wisdom, but I have been around for a while. Long enough, in fact, to have forgotten much and to remember a few things.

Last night Louisville beat DePaul in a college hoops game, a result little noted outside of a small circle of friends and alumni. My doctorate comes from DePaul, so I reckon I am in that small circle even though I have never followed the fortunes of the school’s sportsing endeavors.

I only noticed this game in the scroll of scores because when I read it I remembered a time when that game would have been notable no matter the outcome. I thought, “wow, in the early 1980s that would have been a big game.” Then I thought, “wow, that was 40 years ago.”

Whenever my thoughts run along those lines I’ll think back to what was happening even 40 years earlier. That is to say, when I look back at what was current when I was a young adult – DePaul men’s hoops team being a top seed in March Madness three or four years in a row, for example – I regularly also wonder about what my young adult self thought about events 40 years earlier.

Oddly enough, in the case of DePaul’s men’s hoops team, 40 years earlier than 1983 they actually played in the championship game. Even more oddly, they were coached in ‘83 by the same man, Ray Meyer, who coached them to the championship game in 1943 (lost to Georgetown, in what would also have been a headline game in the early 80s). Oh, and hey, they didn't call it March Madness back then. And, by "back then," I mean 1983.

To be doing the same job in the same place for more than 40 years strikes me as the oddest fact in this collection of wonderings. I don’t really wonder what that would be like because I cannot imagine it. 

On the other hand, there is something comforting in recognizing that people were pursuing the same dreams 40 years ago that they pursued 40 years prior to that. 

We’re still pursuing them now.

Sure, the game has changed in ways that make it practically unrecognizable, but the dream remains the same: to be recognized for your excellence and crowned champion in your field.

There are countless human pursuits. Some of them are noble, others less so. Excellence remains a noble pursuit. Being recognized for it in your chosen field may be less so, but it's not ignoble.

The path that Ray Meyer’s teams followed probably didn’t change much in the essentials over his 42 years of coaching: pay attention to the little things and practice, practice, practice. That’s the only path to excellence in any field even though the game will change as time goes by. Your peers will recognize it even if no one else does.

Somebody probably told me that when I was young, but I didn’t understand it then. It took a while to grasp it, and it’s taken even longer to be grasped by it. 

Practice shapes us. We are what we practice. Practice art, and you’ll be an artist. Practice music, and you’ll be a musician. Practice running, and you’ll be a runner.

And, as Paul put it to the folks at Corinth back in the day, “strive for the excellent gifts … and I will show you a more excellent way.”

That’s his set up to the great chapter on love, where he basically says, “practice love.”

Love is what binds us together and holds us. Love means acknowledging and honoring our common humanity. 

In practice, it looks like kindness. With its shared root with kin and kindred, kindness is putting love – that which binds us together and holds us – into practice. Whether in families of birth or families of choice, kindness makes us kin.  

I’ve tried to practice kindness above all else over the years, and, after 62 trips around the sun, I intend to keep practicing. I commend it, even if I never quite achieve excellence in it, it’s a worthy pursuit. The people close to you will recognize it and honor it in gratitude.