Life Is About Priorities

My daughter asked me how long I plan on playing basketball for and I told her I will do it until I can’t move or it is not fun any more.

“But daddy, aren’t you getting kind of old for it?”

I laughed and told her I was young enough to do almost anything I want to do. She laughed and told me that I was still too old to do certain things and I told her life is about priorities and the choices we make.

Can’t blame her for asking because sometimes the day after the mornings hurt a little bit. Sometimes it takes a bit longer to work out the kinks and to stand up straight.

My game isn’t predicated upon talent. It is built upon trying to out hustle, out muscle and outwork the other side.

I am still willing to dive for balls, set picks and run through whomever is in the way to get to where I am going.

Twenty years ago I could play like this every day and ever think about making adjustments because time hadn’t had its way with me.

Today I can go three or four times a week but only if I give my body a break between it all. Experience has taught me that without that rest I just don’t have it.

*****

It took a long time to accept that things had changed. For a while I blamed the shortcomings on my own lack of talent and figured I just needed to improve a couple parts of my game, but it was more than that.

Life Is About Priorities

If you could turn the clock back 30 years ago to see what I was doing you would have found me hiking through the Judean desert, wandering the streets of Jerusalem or maybe hanging out somewhere around the Golan Heights.

That teenager would have told you that he was certain that in two years he’d leave the U.S. to go to college in Israel and that there was a good chance that was where he would choose to build his life.

Life surprised him and he ended up taking a different path and now the perspective I bring to my personal and professional worlds is entirely different than what he or I would have thought.

Kind of funny to refer to him as he when it is me I am talking about, but even though I remember being 16 so much has happened I can’t be him any more than he could have become me.

The one area I suppose I can be certain of is he would have looked at the man we have become today and asked what the hell happened to our hair and wondered how I couldn’t have maintained the  six pack and muscles.

That 16 year-old would never have understood how easy life is when you have no responsibilities and the challenges of managing time when you do.

But he would have been happy to see that we didn’t become social climbers or choose to measure our self worth based upon the size of our house, cars we drive or clothes we wear.

He would be pleased to see that we value education and experiences and that we taught our children to never be ignorant enough to try and make others feel badly by badmouthing them for what they don’t have.

The Value Of Experiences

Sometimes people give me a hard time about some of the stories I tell about different experiences I have had. Sometimes they ask what I have now and I laugh and shake my head.

I laugh because I have a ton of experiences that are present day and those who know me best understand my focus is upon continuing to build a foundation that provides the opportunity to enjoy more.

When I shake my head it is because I wonder if maybe I have done a poor job of communicating those things or asking if the reason they didn’t hear is because so many people have trouble listening.

They don’t ask questions because they want to know your answer but because it is a bridge that allows them to take a breath so they can continue to talk about themselves.

Or maybe it is a combination of the two.

Does it matter why or how?

Maybe.

From a professional standpoint I think about it because my job is to communicate thoughts and ideas and I pay attention to how I am doing there.

I suppose since I find storytelling and communication interesting on a personal level it makes it easy for me to spend more time thinking about it too.

*****

Every time I look at the photo above I wish I could just walk into the picture.

I’d swim and canoe/sail around the lake and probably take a hike too. I’d have more than a few adventures, I just know it.

Sometimes I look at the photo and think about how I got it as part of a free stock photo service and wonder how many other bloggers will use it in a post.

Will that affect its usefulness for this post? What kind of impact, if any, will it have upon this post?

It reminds me of my desire to become a better photographer and to spend more time working with multimedia so that I can become more effective as using it to help tell a story.

Life is about priorities and figuring out what is important, meaningful and significant to us.