My wife and I were talking last night about the difficulties life seems to foist upon us almost constantly. To be more accurate, we were whining about it and lamenting the fact that it isn't easier and happier. In the midst of this I was reminded of a statement from Don Miller's book "Searching for God Knows What". At some point he (Don) is speaking with a very successful business man and for whatever reason the conversation turns to gambling. The business man very kindly states that all of the successful people he knows never gamble, but instead work hard, accept the facts of reality, and enjoy life. "But," Don says, "the facts of reality stink." His friend responds, "Reality is like a fine wine; it will not appeal to children." Don then goes on to say he's become quite snobby about the subtleties and nuances of reality.
I don't know that I'm quite a reality snob, and sometimes it feels like my reality comes out of a box someone got at the local gas station, but I will admit that considering life in this way helps me a good deal. Instead of operating on the premise that life is supposed to be heavily sweetened lemonade, or maybe at worst an Arnold Palmer so it has just a touch of tartness, considering it a wine allows me to notice its boldness, its complexity, its potency, and of course my wife would mention its strong chocolate undertones...which sometimes turn into overtones.
As a child, one taste of a good wine would have sent me running for the Coca-Cola. But, we all know that stuff is just killing us slowly.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
A true fan
They say truth is better than fiction. I must agree. I couldn't make this stuff up on my best day.
A friend of mine was sharing about a guy he knows who plays fantasy football through the system in Las Vegas. This basically means that he likely spends a lot of money on his fantasy football league (henceforth referred to as FFL), and so probably a fair or commensurate amount of time on it as well.
For those of you who are not "in the know" about FFL, it is essentially an invention of the very desperate and very wishful sporting fan mind. At some pivotal point in human history, a group of fans decided that they needed another connection with their sport. The result of this longing is a game in which contestants "own" their own team (in the case of FFL it's a football team), and then draft real players to belong to their team before the real season starts. Then, each fantasy (or as some have termed it "pretend") team is awarded points based on the real life performance of its players. The fantasy teams play one another each week, and then a champion is declared at the end of the year. The prize for the champion can range anywhere from sweet, sweet bragging rights, to a large sum of money and in some cases a championship ring and trophy. Yes, it's a big, fancy, game of make-believe with a yearly revenue mark in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion; which is just a little less than the GDP of Mongolia.
So, my friend is telling me about this guy who plays in an FFL league through Vegas. Fall comes along one year and it turns out he and his wife are expecting a baby at any time. As luck (or a very powerful being with a sense of humor) would have it, his wife goes into labor on the day that his league is drafting players for their team. Clearly, this is a very important day for him. It is in fact so important that while his wife is preparing to bring forth a living being, he is on his cell phone, calling in his draft picks to Vegas!
This got me thinking though (after I had of course worked through the natural stages of denial, pity, mirth, and tearful laughter). Obviously most people would agree that this person's priorities were out of line. However, this conclusion (which I believe is quite right) is drawn from the premise that a marriage and a child's life are more important than a game, which is not a particularly difficult conclusion to draw based on our understanding of marriage and the value of human life, both of which are derived from our perspective on the world. But, the man on the phone, given his perspective, considered his choice to be the correct one. What if our perspective were also different? Would our choices also be different than they are now? One might here mention eternity, but that's awfully heady, and I don't think we need even go that far. What if our perspective involved a few hundred years, or our children's children? Would our values be different and therefore our priorities re-aligned? I have to believe they would be; and that we might in fact find ourselves partly horrified and partly amused at the number of hospital parking lots we've stood in, making phone calls to Vegas, building an imaginary dynasty.
A friend of mine was sharing about a guy he knows who plays fantasy football through the system in Las Vegas. This basically means that he likely spends a lot of money on his fantasy football league (henceforth referred to as FFL), and so probably a fair or commensurate amount of time on it as well.
For those of you who are not "in the know" about FFL, it is essentially an invention of the very desperate and very wishful sporting fan mind. At some pivotal point in human history, a group of fans decided that they needed another connection with their sport. The result of this longing is a game in which contestants "own" their own team (in the case of FFL it's a football team), and then draft real players to belong to their team before the real season starts. Then, each fantasy (or as some have termed it "pretend") team is awarded points based on the real life performance of its players. The fantasy teams play one another each week, and then a champion is declared at the end of the year. The prize for the champion can range anywhere from sweet, sweet bragging rights, to a large sum of money and in some cases a championship ring and trophy. Yes, it's a big, fancy, game of make-believe with a yearly revenue mark in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion; which is just a little less than the GDP of Mongolia.
So, my friend is telling me about this guy who plays in an FFL league through Vegas. Fall comes along one year and it turns out he and his wife are expecting a baby at any time. As luck (or a very powerful being with a sense of humor) would have it, his wife goes into labor on the day that his league is drafting players for their team. Clearly, this is a very important day for him. It is in fact so important that while his wife is preparing to bring forth a living being, he is on his cell phone, calling in his draft picks to Vegas!
This got me thinking though (after I had of course worked through the natural stages of denial, pity, mirth, and tearful laughter). Obviously most people would agree that this person's priorities were out of line. However, this conclusion (which I believe is quite right) is drawn from the premise that a marriage and a child's life are more important than a game, which is not a particularly difficult conclusion to draw based on our understanding of marriage and the value of human life, both of which are derived from our perspective on the world. But, the man on the phone, given his perspective, considered his choice to be the correct one. What if our perspective were also different? Would our choices also be different than they are now? One might here mention eternity, but that's awfully heady, and I don't think we need even go that far. What if our perspective involved a few hundred years, or our children's children? Would our values be different and therefore our priorities re-aligned? I have to believe they would be; and that we might in fact find ourselves partly horrified and partly amused at the number of hospital parking lots we've stood in, making phone calls to Vegas, building an imaginary dynasty.
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