Wills Park Baseball - It Really is a Family

The Heatons are the poster family for the over-involved American lifestyle.  We have too much going on ... we know that.  Last week, we had a shower at the house and had a couple rooms painted in a rush and the AC broke - all while not stopping one minute in all of our regular stuff.  I can honestly say that it was a pretty typical week.

Heather and I are hyper-social.  And we can't say no to anyone or anything, especially if it sounds like fun.  Add to that a love for sports and you get one crazy summer.  We're Atlanta natives so we have lots of local relatives.  I can trace local roots back 200 years in DeKalb County so there's plenty of extended family in there as well.  (My 8x great grandfather fought in the American Revolution and is buried off Brockett Road in Tucker) 

Two Kinds of People

Thinking out loud this morning ... are you a person who puts people at ease or are you the one who makes people uncomfortable?  I can be either, depending on the situation, but I want to be the guy who puts people at ease.

I was actually around the uncomfortable kind the other night.  I mean, perhaps the most uncomfortable person I've ever been around.  The effect it had on me was it pushed me in the extreme direction of compliance and amiability.  Weird.

If you're the guy with whom people are comfortable, you're nice to be around.  And you don't get a lot of feedback because people assume you know.  They enjoy your company and feel good about themselves when they're around you.  In fact, chances are, you often find yourself surrounded by awkward people and awkward settings because people know they can count on you to ease the tension. 

If you don't put people at ease, you probably don't know it.  In fact, people are trying so hard to be easy-going around you because you're the one adding tension to the situation.  You're surrounded by folks with kid gloves because they are not quite sure how to take you.  The really bad news is, they don't look forward to interacting with you.

It usually boils down to how self-aware you are.  BUT not always!!!  My introspective nature might suggest that I have a strong sense of self-awareness and for argument's sake, I will accept that I am a self-aware person.  And sometimes, I know I am the one who adds pressure, adds tension, and makes people uncomfortable.  I won't go as far as to say that I do it on purpose, but I will admit that I am aware that I'm doing it.

So maybe there are three kinds of people :).  Easy-going people, difficult people who don't know they are difficult, and (the worst) people who are being difficult and are fully aware that they're acting that way!  It's a working theory ....

My Sunday

I have a confession to make stemming from yesterday.  Speaking of, I've always been fascinated by the Catholic church.  Catholic friends, please don't be offended by this, but I don't believe it is necessary to confess your sins to a priest.  But it really is a mysterious and strangely appealing concept.  In that spirit, I must tell you all that I think I have broken the commandment which calls us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

Oh, I went to church, unlike a lot of my Wills Park baseball family!  But yesterday was not, by any stretch, a day of rest.  Here it is, play by play, my Sunday...

I Hear Voices

Signed up to play in a singles' league.  No, this isn't a chance to meet women.  This is tennis played all by yourself.  Well, you play against another person, but you are the only one on your side of the net.

Anyway, I haven't played singles in a couple years and my neighbor and I agreed that we should both go out and hit before the season started.  We did this on Tuesday.  We started at around 9 PM and played two sets.  If you are not familiar with tennis, I will now draw an analagy between doubles and singles...

Doubles is to singles as walking around the mall and stopping for a Chick-fil-A biscuit is to running a 10K.

The Good King, Part I

The Good King

There was a certain king who lived a long time ago.  The king was indeed a rarity during the Age of Kings and in fact for any age; for it was said wide and far, by the rich and the poor, in the markets and in the planters’ fields … that he was a good, a just, and a wise king.

No matter the terminology, monarchies tend toward absolutism and absolutism in any form is always disastrous.  No man can be allowed unchecked authority.  This is perhaps the most profound and proven lesson of all history.  If you haven’t learned this in totality, pick up any textbook.  Read of Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Hussein, Lenin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible, Edward I, Nero, Khan – these are just some examples of rulers who abused absolute authority.  One might even be able to reason that all truly notorious villains were only able to become notorious because they were first trusted, and given free reign.

Early Americans understood this.  In the 1770s, one of the popular signs in Patriotic Boston read, “We serve no sovereign here.”  Rule by the people was at once a revolutionary concept and a baldly obvious one.  It was understood in full, that rule by one is always lacking, always corrupt, always self-serving, and often cruel and murderous.

Even though the king of our story lived many years before the French and American revolutions, this king understood this just the same.  His understanding came not so much from history but from his knowledge of human nature.  Keenly, he saw that his best intentions were sullied by his own self-interests.  And at his very worst, he was capable of acting with malevolence and cruelty.  Yes, relatively speaking, he was a good and kind person.  But there was too much at stake to allow himself to fall for this ancient trick that has been the bane of so many.  A firm conviction in this absolute truth of the human condition shaped the man, forging him into a being of vigilance and constant self-inspection.  And so, with this belief held firm in his spirit, he painstakingly established the rule of law in his land.

In the field of psychology, doctors are sometimes compelled to constrain patients from hurting themselves.  A person who desires to hurt himself can quite be considered insane, or at the very least, irrational.  But a person who is a risk to hurt others is simply human – the very reason for police, armies, jails, and laws.  A very small part of these institutions protect the citizenry from crazy people.  Largely, they are to protect us from our very neighbors – the ones we trust and the ones we think would never wrong us … the reason why our king sought self-constraint.  He was wise enough to distrust himself. 

He began with the establishment of a national defense of which he was the commander-in-chief.  He added a police force and shrewdly appointed his most ardent and capable critic to manage it.  The final piece was communication.  An informed kingdom at least meant that they could see the need for tax and certainly the need for protection.  The king necessarily kept a small court, in order to ensure that his men held firm to the same principles as he.  That also meant the king and his most trusted advisers spent many hours organizing group meetings so that all would be informed and the subjects knew how there taxes were applied and how their kingdom was being run.  All in all, the king had designed a very clean system with a small government and very few laws.

In hindsight, the weakness was the lack of a systemized judiciary.  Basically, the laws were three:  do not kill or injure one another, do not damage another’s property by theft or by vandalism of any sort, and pay taxes as required by the crown.  Punishment for breaking these laws was swift and firm, (by today’s standard, rather Draconian) and usually handled by a local magistrate.  The king had reasoned that such a simple system would not require an elaborate court system and so one day a month, he sat as judge over the very few cases in the kingdom that required interpretation of the law.

Kings throughout history have had cronies and have provided favors to their friends.  Our king recognized this and decided, unhappily, that in order to avoid this trap, he would need to live a life of isolation.  He was very visible and recognized he needed to spend time among the people but he held that he couldn’t allow himself to become too close to any of them.  Any sign of an obsequious nature meant one was unfit for high office in the palace as the king needed honest dialogue, not spineless compliance.  And while these men were respected and trusted, they could not become close friends.  Once business had been conducted, he kept his distance from even his most capable and honorable advisors, out of a desire to remain impartial.

One can imagine that the king might’ve been profoundly sad, if dutiful.  And for a time, this was true.  Until the day his son was born. 

The king’s son was the most celebrated personage in the history of the kingdom.  The people loved their king and they loved this little prince who had brought such happiness to the palace.  Their sad and wise and good king who was always fair with his people had become passionate about the future of the kingdom.  The king was still stalwart and resolute, but the prince had come into the picture and the king eschewed his more robotic tendencies.  No longer merely seeing his role as a custodian over peace and justice, the king began to see the kingdom as a place for his son to inherit and the result was a brighter light to his countenance and a more hopeful, purposeful stride in his step.  In effect, it was the difference between maintaining a place for the landlord and maintaining a place that you own.  He saw each day as an opportunity to impart to his son, the beliefs and ethos of his rule – a system carefully developed and executed out of earnest and meticulous study of people and paradigms and natures ... what works, and what doesn’t.

END OF PART I

Perspectives - How I Met Your Mother Edition

How I Met Your Mother is one of my favorite shows.  This is a funny exchange where they discover Barney has a poster of Karate Kid in his room and they give him a hard time ...

Barney - Hey, The Karate Kid is a great movie.  It’s the story of a hopeful, young karate enthusiast whose dreams and moxie take him all the way to the All Valley Karate Championship. Of course, sadly he loses in the final round to that nerd kid. But, he learns an important lesson about gracefully accepting defeat.

Lily - Wait, when you watch The Karate Kid you actually root for that mean blonde boy?

Barney - No, I root for the scrawny loser from New Jersey who barely even knows karate. When I watch The Karate Kid I root for the karate kid, Johnny Lawrence from the Cobra Kai dojo.

Marshall - You're telling me that when you watch "The Karate Kid", you don't root for Daniel-san?
Ted - Who do you root for in "Die Hard"?
Barney - Hans Gruber. Charming international bandit. In the end, he dies hard. He's the title character.
Lily - What about "The Breakfast Club"?

Barney - The teacher running detention. He's the only guy in the whole movie wearing a suit.
Robin - I've got one. "The Terminator".
Barney - What's the name of the movie, Robin? Who among us did not shed a tear when his little red eye went out in the end, and he didn't get to kill all those people?