Sunday musings 8/19/18
Sunday musings…
1) Bollocks. Testicles. Who knew? The whole kerfuffle over the Sex Pistols album title makes a ton more sense now.
2) Directed. “Use as directed.” I’m not sure who is more surprised. Mothers when their offspring open up some something or other and just fly into using it (and it works), or said offspring when they fail to check the directions and whatever it is they opened doesn’t work.
For the record this is also a problem in areas that are a bit less trivial than a tiny drone received as a birthday gift. Like medicine.
3) Knots. “Miles per hour plus the glamour of the open sea.” –Mark Childress.
Not terrifically accurate, but who’s gonna argue with that little bit of poetry?
4) Despair. Why is it that so-called “great literature” always ends in despair? The boy never gets the girl and vice versa. Every family is rendered asunder whether or not they deserve that particular fate. Why?
Lettie Teague wrote about her summer reading, all of her books centered in some way around wine as a pivotal character. Upon reading the headline I was excited to have some fun, happy reading for a change. Yah. About that. Even the consumption of epic wines was spoiled by the despair that prompted the binge or that which ensued.
Jeez. Winston Churchill managed to help save the world when he drank. How come no one can write literature with a happy ending?
5) Change. Inspired by by near lifelong friend Bob.
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same. –David Bowie
Grand baby birthdays. Siblings and their offspring passing milestones. 40th high school reunions. There is no escaping the passing of time. Along with the ebbs and flows there has been but one, single constant: change. Each day seems so much like the one just passed, and yet a glance ever so slightly further back brings an awfully quick reality check. Change has been afoot. “You haven’t changed” is such a lovely thing to hear, yet it, too, cannot withstand even a passing glance in the mirror.
There is nothing new or even remotely weighty about noting change. What is significant, though, is the importance of both acknowledging and accepting change, however disruptive it may be physically or emotionally. One must be able to see change and react accordingly, no matter how difficult it may be for either an individual or for those who may be highly interested spectators. I think of my good friends from California, true pioneers in both the CrossFit movement and subsequently independently in the larger fitness world. They have looked at how their world, their lives have changed, and they have accepted the need to change as well. For them it begins with the closing of a beloved, iconic gym which is rightly famous worldwide, the loss of which has been met with an international tsunami of tears. Yet they have seen the change and have accepted that the time had come.
Some changes are so disruptive that they turn lives upside down even when you know they are on the way. Our friends Bob and Kathy begin the journey toward an empty nest as their only child begins his senior year in high school. So, too, my brother and sister-in-law must adapt to the changes brought by college graduation and their sons’ retirement from competitive sports. No longer will Randall and Joanne plan each week around their boys’ games. My sisters and their husbands are soon to follow. Will those changes be any less impactful given foreknowledge?
Someone, I’m not sure if they like me or not, once asked at what age I would choose to be frozen if such a thing was possible. How old would you choose to be, with all of the attributes of that age but no prospect of any further growth or development? It’s an impossible question, a cruel koan which cannot be solved. How can one possibly choose between the youthful feet attached to the running shoes that are so joyfully and maddeningly soaked by your child and the archless soles doused by a grandchild? Which is better, to have the agility to dance away from your son’s aim lest your shoes be ruined, or to happily submit to the realization that the laughter of your grandson is more than worth the fact that you can no longer save the shoes regardless.
Besides, the shoes have changed, too. They’re waterproof now.
Changes are happy and sad, big and small. We lose parents and friends. Special places like our friends’ gym close taking with them any chance they may change us for the better. Heck, it looks like I’ll be changing hips sometime soon, a change I for some reason thought I’d be the only one to escape. It makes me sad to hear parents tell a child “don’t change; stay like this forever” because that is one wish that will never be granted. Nor should it. After all, there is only one way to assure that change will never come.
I am not done changing
Out on the run, changing
I may be old and I may be young
But I am not done changing –John Mayer
Change is life. To change is to be alive. Embracing change is to live.
I’ll see you next week…
–bingo
Tags: bingo, Brand, change, Crossfit, crossfit.com, glassman, martin, musings, sunday
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