A few years ago, I was playing center field on a softball team. It was a beautiful fall evening. The sun was slowly fading, a cool breeze was moving across the field. Just a perfect setting.
I yelled over to the left fielder, “This is pretty great, huh?”
He looked at me, a little confused. “What’s that?” he asked.
“We’re playing softball. Look at this! Pretty great, isn’t it?”
“Sure.”
I think he thought I was nuts.
But I meant it.
I don’t think we do this enough. I know I don’t.
We get so caught up in what happened yesterday, what we need to do tomorrow, and whatever is waiting for us when we get home. We’re always somewhere else.
You are never going to be this young again. You are never going to stand in this exact place, on this exact evening, with these exact people, ever again. And there we were, not sitting at home watching some dumb sitcom or a movie we’d already seen five times.
We were playing ball.
The outfield lights were slowly coming on. There was still enough daylight to see the ball. At any moment, a line drive might come screaming toward me, and I might have a chance to make a great catch.
I’m even a little nervous.
I’m alive.
I’ve been thinking about that feeling a lot lately.
This summer, I’ve been hurt. Nothing catastrophic, but enough that I’ve had to put some of the things I love on hold. I can’t go hiking. I can’t play sports or ride a bike.
And it’s been hard on me.
Then I saw that my friend Mike had started a CaringBridge page. Friends and family are following his battle with cancer.
Instant perspective.
It doesn’t make my injury disappear. It doesn’t mean I can’t be frustrated. But it does make me stop and think about how easily I can lose sight of what matters.
And it’s not just an injury.
How much time do we spend worrying about things that, in the moment, feel enormous? The person who treated us unfairly for literally no reason. The poor choice we made. The conversation we wish we could take back. The thing we’re afraid might happen tomorrow.
We give those things a lot of time.
A lot of space.
When I think about Mike getting chemotherapy day after day, I look at my own life a little differently. The things that were bothering me are still there. But they’re not all there is.
I guess that’s what I was feeling that night in center field.
None of that was with me out there.
I wasn’t thinking about work. I wasn’t replaying an old conversation. I wasn’t worrying about something I’d screwed up or something that might happen tomorrow.
I was just standing there.
The breeze was hitting me. The lights were coming on. I was waiting for the action to come to me.
That’s it.
And maybe that’s the point.
We spend so much time trying to make sense of our crazy lives that sometimes we forget to simply live them.
I don’t remember who won that softball game. I don’t remember if I got a hit or scored a run.
But I do remember being the center fielder.
And for a few minutes, I wasn’t anywhere else.
I was standing in the grass.
Feeling the breeze.
Waiting to make a play.
Thinking, this is pretty great.
It was.
It still is.
