How hard could it be? It’s just T-Ball.
Send an almost five year old into his first team sport. Let him play in the local league. You show up and cheer for all the tiny humans, laugh when the batters chase their own hits. Easy enough.
What I didn’t take into account was the fact I am not in control of any of it. The coaching. The practices, or lack of. My own child’s behavior. The attention span and motivation deficit. The inequality of the teams within the league— like clearly there was a missed memo or ten on how the game was supposed to be played (Why are these coaches pitching?! It’s T-Ball!). By the mid-season game, there were at least six little people laying on the field after the first inning, too bored to even play in the dirt.
T-Ball was humbling.
We retired from T-Ball, early.
We quit.
The lesson, because there’s a lesson at every turn, is that sticking with something just for the sake of sticking with it is not actually a good model for living life.
Case in point: I got married once because we had been dating for 5 years. Lived together. Got a cat. I said yes to that person because that is what you are supposed to do— finish the thing you’ve committed to .
But friends, I fucked up.
That is not a contract you sign out of commitment to some moral law or expected outcome. You should absolutely love the one you’re with.
The aha! moment in that timeline was about as dramatic as realizing the T-Ball life was too boring to continue— there had to be something else. Something more alive. Something that even when it wasn’t all disco balls and homeruns, you could at least get by. Maybe by drawing in the dirt for a minute, until the game got good again.
You deserve a life with all the sparkle your heart desires. There is precious little time to waste waiting for the moment you feel alive. You are alive now, and the time to choose a life you love is in every moment. Far too often we make decisions based on the societal expectations, what appears normal, or what our traditions have been. The older I get, the more sure I am that traditions need to be questioned. A lot.
Make a habit of asking yourself where your decisions come from— are they driven by your unbridled joy for life? Or is there some programming going on that makes you think you should wear your hair a certain way, or treat a person differently based on their appearance, or assume there’s any truth to goodness and badness you’ve been sold on TV?
Check your inner monologue, often. Get curious about why you feel compelled to make decisions. Choose the path that’s true to you. May it always be the path illuminated by love. If it’s not, you don’t have to keep at it. Choose again. It will not always be rainbows and birdsong, but at least you’ll know you are the one leading the narrative. And the birds will sing for you again.
PS: I am currently living a glittering existence, after a very mundane dissolution of marriage all those years ago. Life keeps moving, and the fire in my soul remains lit and well tended. Every day is a chance to choose the kind of person I want to be. Today, I am a writer, and that’s pretty amazing.
Thank you, always, for being here.
We quit too, I love this....
I do love the play on words, also beautifully written peace!