I guess I’ve finally figured it out, but it took me long enough.  I’ll describe the two scenarios.

Late last evening I found myself in a Greek pizzeria in the middle of nowhere U.S.A. (otherwise known as Rutland, MA).  I was sitting with a group of families that I have come to love being around in the last few years.  We talked about football, medicine, Spanish (yes, my wife was involved), and community.  I shared about me, and listened about them, and in the end, I had this incredible sense of fulfillment that I did not have even 2 hours before.

Earlier in the evening I played basketball with about 20% of the group in the pizzeria (our wives and children joined us for the festivities).  We played hard and we had fun, but in the end we came up short.  I was sick.  Not in the ‘my stomachs a bit too queasy and I think I have the swine’ sense, but more like the ‘I want to kick these bleachers across nowhere U.S.A’ sense.  I couldn’t believe we lost, and in the end – like most guys in the competitive world – I blamed myself.  “I could have done more,” assumed my internal thoughts battling for justification.

Then Carie and I drove to the pizzeria and enjoyed the company of most of the team.

And it was then, after only 34 years of living on this earth that it finally hit me.  I mean, I knew this intellectually, but not actually.  We could have won the game, and our smiles would have been a bit bigger and our conversation a bit more animated, but it didn’t really matter.  What mattered was the time I was spending with these friends, and the vehicle by which I met up with these friends happened to be basketball.  It could have been bridge or rummy or the 2nd episode of “House” on Fox, but it was basketball, and yet I finally realized (for real) that it wasn’t about the basketball at all.  That was just the vehicle, that one day when I get too old, I’ll trade in for the vehicle of golf.  I realized driving home from the pizzeria that evening that the reason I played in the first place was the friendships that are developing.  And I went home much more satisfied than even if we had won the game.

But I still hope the Steelers don’t learn this principle this year.

Marty Holman

Jack Bauer

The following is a sore subject with me, and happens between the hours of 12 am and 12 am the next day.

Last night I watched the two hour adrenaline rush that was 24 via my DVR, which made it about an hour and a half.  It was so crazy I had to walk around the living room for the better part of a half hour of the program.  Without going into detail about the happenings of Jack Bauer, I can tell you this has been one of the best seasons yet!  Which is fascinating because I really disliked season 6.

Now one of the things that is a constant on 24 is that there are always people that you cannot trust.  Anyone may turn out to be a traitor or a terrorist, which got me to thinking about something.  One thing I do not handle well is when someone who I’m very close to drastically becomes someone different.  I’m kind of aware that this is America and anyone can do what they want to do, so please save those comments, I’m just venting.

In fact, this is one of those areas where I could probably work on the art of forgiveness the most.  Watching a husband or a wife decide they’ve  “outgrown” the other, only to justify a new lifestyle which he or she has transitioned.  Or a close friend who somewhere along the line has been talked into the idea that they are not into those of the opposite gender, and then relays the new idea that they never were.  Or even the couple who all of a sudden can’t stand the idea of a culturally relevant church, and decide that the very idea is from Satan.

Now if you’re offended that I’ve brought any of these “offenses to me” up, don’t be.  This post has nothing to do with the offenses.  Maybe we’ll save those topics for another day – maybe not.  This post has everything to do with how I look at these offenses.  When someone in my life makes a drastic change, making them a new person in my eyes, I have a hard time forgiving them.  I become the new Jack Bauer, targeting the offender, and trying desperately to stop the change from happening.

What I’m saying is that it’s difficult for me to buy the “I’m just not that person anymore” change.

Maybe it’s because I live in a dream world.  Maybe it’s because the family history between my parents and both sets of  grandparents maintains about 160 years of marriage straight through (60/59/38).  Maybe it’s because my “never change” baptistic ways which I was indoctrinated as a child are still deep inside fighting the now prevalent idea of evolutionistic theory that runs amok in the things I read.  I don’t know what it is, but I’m just telling you, right here and right now…

I think I need to work on it.  Or do I?