Circus Boy

So ... I turn 42 in a few hours.

I think it's reasonable to expect that I've lived about half my life at this point. And I'm ok w/ that. I've always considered myself to be a second half team, anyway. I just need to make some halftime adjustments. Here's what I'm thinking:

First, I'm thinking I need to be a little less conservative. Air it out a little bit. Maybe press a little bit in the backcourt. It seems to me that life favors the aggressive. And being aggressive doesn't have to equal being obnoxious. I think I need to reach out a little more. I'm guessing that 95% of all people, if they have regrets at all at the end of life, regret the things they didn't do more than the things that they did do. I think sometimes I'm governed by my fears (rejection and failure, primarily) ... in the second half I'm going to swing for the fences occasionally. I may strike out some ... but maybe I'll get a hold of a few.

Second, I think I've done a pretty good job of sticking to my game plan ... provide a good return on the talents that God gave me by making the world a marginally better place ... but the execution has been poor at times. I've missed some opportunities to do good. Need to keep my eyes open to where I can help and step in accordingly.

Third, I need to get in my face a little bit here at halftime. My greatest shortcomings are still selfishness and laziness. A friend of mine said recently "Why accept mediocrity? Why?" (He wasn't talking about me ... but he might as well have been.) I need to move the puck up the ice a little faster, finish some checks, start blasting some one-timers. The race may be half over. I have the stamina to finish it. I can pick up the pace a little. I simply need to start giving 100%.

Before closing w/ a section from a really cool book I'm reading, I want to say how much I love my teammates down here. tbKMD, APD, Mom, Dad, Kathy, Kris, Carrie, GMa Fitz, the rest of my family, and all my friends ... thank you, thank you, thank you .... now let's go get 'em.

"Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come out of my mother's womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums. I unfold and find flight hundreds of feet above the center ring, the smell of popcorn in the air, the clowns gather below, amazed at my grace, and all the people chanting my name as my arms come out like wings and I move swan-like toward the apex, where I draw my arms in, collapse my torso to my legs, roll over in perfection, then slowly give in to gravity. My body falls back toward earth, the ground coming up quick, the center ring enormous beneath my falling weight.

And this is precisely when it occurs to me that there is no net. And I wonder, What is the use of a circus? and Why should a man bother to be shot out of a cannon? and Why is the crowd's applause so fleeting? and ... Who is going to rescue me?"