I abhor the phrase “At least he died doing something he loved.” It’s among the many platitudes that turn my stomach at funerals. In the case of young Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, though, it is an appropriate statement.
Push aside the shock and sadness of this terrible event. Few, if any, could argue that 21 is anything other than “too soon” for a life to end. Further, though the inherent dangers of luge are many, death on the track is impermissible. We’ll ignore questions about the safety of the track, implications Canadians limited other teams training for a competitive advantage and outrage over the decision to name athlete error as the cause to focus on the things that make all Olympic athletes—simply by making it to the Games themselves—a success.
1. Figure Out A Dream
In order do do anything, a goal is necessary. You must have something to push your energies toward or you are simply drifting through life. Why get out of bed without consciously setting a target?
2. Put In Daily Work
Once you have something in mind, it’s time to buckle down and put your efforts toward it. Avoid the mistake of thinking you must leap from where you are to where you’re going. Olympians train years to even sniff an opportunity to participate in the quadrennial event. Listening to your national anthem from the top of medal stand as your country’s flag is pulled to the rafters is a thousand mile-road covered inches at a time. Millions of little steps cover great distances with a higher success rate than an Evel Knievel-style jump.
3. Manage Your Fear
You will face many challenges along the way. There will be mornings you’d rather stay in bed or painful injuries (physical or emotional) to heal. The only way to overcome these setbacks is to accept them, realize the unknown is inextricably linked to change and boldly tell the world “I will either win or die.”
Upon learning a family friend, one of my “other grandpas,” passed this morning. A question came to mind: How much does death teach us about a person?
A visibly shaken IOC President Jacques Rogge, at the press conference before the Opening Ceremonies, eulogized Kumaritashvili: “Here you have a young athlete who lost his life pursuing is passion.”
What would you do to be remembered that way?
“Most jobs aren’t glamorous.”
Those four words have bounced through my head several times during the last few weeks. I noticed them as I scanned a collection of notes for The Essential Wooden by one of my favorite leaders, former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.
Though this phrase was in reference to team building and helping each person understand his or her role, it has been little comfort in this era of my life. As tears of frustration and disconnection well up in my eyes, feeling as though I just have to do something to make money angers me.
I am dissatisfied with the idea that work should be a passionless means to an end, a way to gather money eight hours a day and then snap the day’s stress into my briefcase for the ride home. The idea that misery with monetary benefit is how I should spend a third of my weekdays turns my stomach.
I have tired of feeling guilty for desiring to be different and silently apologizing for going against the flow into cubicle hell. I have a seething disdain for the idea each of us is here to survive life and wistfully hope for something better, to dream of a time in the past where a different decision would have made for a positive experience.
I have chosen to believe differently.
Instead of strapping into a chair and filling out TPS reports in the hopes my 401(k) will last me from 65 until I die, I’m pursuing me. I’m loosening the shackles of old expectations, shedding the weight of old thoughts that pushed me toward delusions of money and grandeur. I must die knowing I lived and, though I may be far from what I’m made to do for this day, endeavor each morning to take another step closer to my purpose, my dream and my service to God.
So, I’ve chosen to do my damnedest to remember this next time my brain reels at the thought of a shift at the office supply store or teaching a class just for the money.
“…we are all given a certain potential unique to each one of us. Our first responsibility is to make the utmost effort to bring forth that potential in service to our team.”
Step into the game. We’re all on the same team.
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Sometimes, you find something in the middle of nothing.
In the midst of tremendous quiet, you hear a whisper. It’s startling. It’s moving. It’s clear. The plug is in the outlet and the light is blinding. The simplicity is striking and humbling. Strangely, you find comfort with it as you wonder why you didn’t think of it before.
Something finally makes sense.
It’s the gift you’ve been waiting to open, the package you’ve hoped would be delivered. It’s presented to you for the achievement of a purpose. It is energetic and focused, strong and unbreakable. It is an end for a means, a result for your work.
Something is what you live for.
This idea is the seed. Much depends on what you do with it. Will you give it the attention required to grow or ignore it as it withers? Will you choose to help it live grandly or allow it to die silently with its potential?
Something requires you to act.
This is the power of something.
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Everything is old.
It has always been here. Physics tells us that a closed system, like our universe, will always have the exact same amount of energy. Further, we know it has been expanding for somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 billion years…containing the same amount of stuff. That means, in the first millisecond (about 1/40 of the time it takes you to blink) after creation everything that ever was, is or will be inhabited a tiny—yet rapidly expanding—cosmos.
Everything is arranged.
Matter is simply an organized form of energy, a bunch of atoms that slowed down enough to appear solid…to appear solid. This “everything” is paradoxically made up of “something” and a remarkable amount of “nothing.” Accelerated to the speed of light squared, you’d be millions upon millions of times more powerful than a bolt of lightning.
Everything is connected.
Occasionally, we are reminded of our opus and the scope of our wonderful lives. All is inextricably tied together, molded from an eternal image. What makes you “you” and me “me” is a sliver of the Creator given boundaries. What was timeless is made to play by rules of hours and days it struggles to comprehend. What was boundless is now limited by the reach of clumsy extremities to inches and feet. We fight impatience, feeling somewhere deep down all is within reach yet knowing everything must be put in order.
Everything moves with you.
Toss aside the belief that anything is against you. You are a part of everything! It shifts to accommodate you—what matters is the direction you face. Like an airliner cutting across the sky, the space will be filled behind you. Whether you take off heading east or west, uphill or down, everything will support you. It parts before you and gathers behind you so that you might push forward.
This is the power of everything.
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