I know that you all care oh so much what my opinion on the matter is, so I figured I would chime in.
(I know you read that with as much sarcasm as I wrote it, but if not, go back and read it with deep sarcasm.) Simone Biles. I wish I had all the time in the world to write about Simone Biles and her astonishing decision to drop out of the team Olympics. I don't. So I will make this short and sweet. Maybe. She is a national treasure. She is one of a kind. She is officially my favorite athlete of all time. Done. Or not. She is my favorite athlete though. No joking about it. That woman called out a system of abuse that was taking place for decades. She performs at the highest level of all gymnasts, hitting moves that only a handful of men have the power to do. She is stunningly beautiful. She is a team minded human, even in the face of hurt, pain, and emotional discord. She has done more for the sport, and athletes throughout the Olympics, than any other human. You all know my battles with depression, anxiety, and abuse (well, maybe you don't know that last part, but it's there). For me, basketball let me feel a sense of home and security. A ball in my hand is like a hug from God himself. There's rest and peace in the gymnasium. The worst that I had it in my basketball career was a coach that threw clipboards at my head and yelled nasty things, an assistant coach that kicked me in the head and gave me a concussion, and a percentage of an experience like Ms. Biles'. (I was often penalized in recreational basketball with fouls that I did not commit because I would steal the ball from lesser players and the ref didn't think it was fair that I could steal and score on repeat. So instead of making the other girls get better, or even sending me to an older aged league, they penalized me. Not even close to the nonsense they have pulled with Simon Biles' scoring.) All in all, that means that basketball was a place of refuge for me. Can you imagine one of the biggest parts of you, that you love dearly, being corrupted with sexual abuse? Can you imagine doing your absolute best- at an insanely high output- in front of millions of people while taking any sort of abuse? Most people I know, cannot fathom what she has gone through. Lord knows I can't. Simone Biles is a role model. I am grateful to have watched this whole thing unfurl while having children. She has now taught my children that it is okay to in charge of your mental and physical health, which is something I worry about. My daughter has left classes bleeding, but she continued through the pain. She has left with bruises, scrapes, and cuts. And all the while, she believes that the teacher has her back. But I wonder. I'm sure many people still feel like she's a quitter, that she let down her team. To those I ask one question - what sport did you medal in at the Olympics and how often were you abused?
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In today's society, discipline is a bad word. Discipline is mean and hurtful. Discipline destroys hopes and dreams and good feelings.
What a load, huh? The view of "discipline" is so terrifyingly wrong, and I'm not sure what we can do to fix it. When I would spank my child, people would say things like, "I could never hit my child!" It wasn't about hitting a child. I have seen people wallop, hit, and abuse their children. That's not what a spanking is. A spanking is to give consequence for action. It's a lesson. At a young age, taking away TV time or going to the playground, or even taking away dessert, is not a consequence that young minds can understand. Talking to them and reason doesn't work either. But a quick pop on a diapered or pull-up covered bottom redirects the child and teaches them that what they have done was not a good thing. As my children grew older, discipline has changed. It might be the removal of a fun activity. It might be a stern lecture. It might be writing an essay about why doing what was done was a bad idea. The possibilities have opened up. The discipline has not stopped. When my son was in the two-three range, we discussed discipline a great deal. It was not a punishment. I didn't care for that word. Discipline is teaching. It comes from the Latin root discupula, meaning student. We see it in the Bible - the disciples were a group of students. To discipline is to teach a lesson. Discipline is a form of love. When you teach a child right from wrong, you are showing love to them. You care about them now and in the future. You are giving them a chance to grow into a great human. But discipline is more than authority to subordinate - be it parent/child, boss/employee, teacher/student, etc. Discipline is a tool that should be used for yourself. And it should be applied each and every day. Athletes (the great ones) understand discipline. They don't show up for a try-out and expect to make the team if they haven't played the game in a while. They don't grab Burger King before a game. They don't wait for someone else to do it. But adults all over the country are displaying their continual attitude towards discipline. I see far too many people that are unhappy with aspects of their lives - career, relationships, body, finances - and their choice is to complain and move on to the next thing. Over and over there is discontent. But what would happen if discipline were applied? What if we worked through the bad times and set up little goals to make life better each day? Honestly, I want to be a best selling novelist. I do. BUT I'm not always the most disciplined in my work. I don't edit my work enough. I don't write as steady a word count daily as I would like. I don't submit my work as often as I should. I have good reason. It's not my season. I have had to put that as a part-time, work as much as I can job so that my kids have priority. But the days are coming when I won't be driving them around every single day. The days are coming where they won't need me as much with school. The days are coming when *I don't want to say it* they won't like me and won't want me around. How will I fill my days? By being disciplined in all of the things I need to do to become a world class author. How do I know that I will be disciplined then? I am working on being disciplined now. This very blog. Making a commitment to write for my few readers is discipline. Making sure I edit at least one chapter a day is discipline. Putting pen to paper each day, even if it is microscopic, is discipline. Discipline is a beautiful word. Discipline makes bad people good, good people great, and great people unstoppable. May we all live a life of discipline. Not too long ago I was outside doing a ladder workout (the speed and agility ladder that you would see athletes using, not an actual climb up or down the side of the house ladder). And at the end of the ladder there was a mass of something. Being that our light was broken, the neighbors didn't have theirs on, and the only light came from the moon behind houses and light from the garage, I had a difficult time trying to figure out what the mass was.
My initial thought was that it was a bat. Who does that? I know. But still. The lines and coloring looked like a bat at rest. Seeing as it was on the ground, I thought maybe it was hurt or dead. I was not poking that one. When I worked at the high school, the old gym had a bat infestation. I once almost grabbed a handle with a bat on it. It flew at me right before I almost grabbed it. Yikes. We have bat issues in our neighborhood. So, naturally, I thought it might just be one. As I ran near it and past it, I noticed it didn't move. So clearly, even if it was a bat, it was not alive and moving. The more I looked at this rounded beast the more I tried to convince myself that it was just a leaf. Still, in my heart, I couldn't let it go. It looked like a hunched up bat. I often feel that this is how people view me. They see me lying on the ground as a huddled mass of bat ready to charge at the next person. But that's not me at all. I'm quite docile. I keep to myself. I mind my own business. I just want to make sure my family and I are doing what we need to do. That isn't often received as such. They see me as standoffish, aloof, not willing to interact. None of those are true. I often assume that you see the bat and run away, when I'm only a leaf hanging out. I feel this way in my work as well. For me, working means training clients, writing workouts, writing blogs, writing books, editing, reading, and many things that others wouldn't consider as work. They see a bat. She just wants to huddle off to herself and read books and write stuff down. She can't ever join us for things. She doesn't want to help with what we're doing. Not the case at all. I'm happy to join in, but that also means that I will end up putting my work aside and feeling more pressure on myself to get my work done when you aren't around. I'm not trying to be lazy or unsocial. I just want to work. At the end of my workout, the sun was rising. I cleaned up the ladder and looked down. Before me sat a decent sized dead leaf. Definitely wasn't a bat. In fact, the reason I had seen the shadows and lines as such was because the leaf was concave, not convex as it laid on the ground. How often to we see something and flip it upside down? How often do our mind's eyes switch a harmless leaf to a scary bat? Are we judging people based upon what we see at one time of day in the midst of shadows or in the sunlight of truth? The truth is, we don't always know what another leaf is going through. Those scary lines are more likely shadows playing tricks on us. We must take the time to look at the whole picture. Although we aren't Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights believing that "If you're not first, you're last," we know that we do need to be progressing forward. At least, I hope we all know that we should be moving forward. We must be growing in our lives.
This is often a tough concept for adults. As a child, or teen, it's easier. There is a whole world ahead of us and there are bigger and better things. But then, somewhere along the way, we get beat up. We're tired of the grind. We long to sit and be still. The idea of growth dwindles. After all, we're here. We made it. We often think of growth in sports. Practice, practice, practice! Music is the same. Education as well. We take classes, get tutors, do extra credit. When we find our career we jump through the hoops, stay extra hours, learn the latest techniques and grow with hope of climbing the ladder. What about the parts of us that never leave? In no particular order: mind, heart, spirit, emotions, will, all the internal points of our being. I know in the church we talk about spiritual growth and what that looks like, but can there be more? I think so. Do you ever look back at a situation and think, "Wow, I bet if this happened eight years ago I would have yelled at that idiot."? I know I have. I have learned when to speak and when to listen. I've learned how to speak to different people in ways that work for the best for all of us. I've learned when speaking would mean nothing and so I hold my tongue. Too often I feel that people have no desire to grow as human beings. We have become self-righteous, entitled people that shout, "I am who I am. Let me be me!" What a load of crap. This is simply an excuse to act like a jerk and expect to get away with it. There. I said it. And I say it from experience. I used to say that I was sarcastic and it's not my fault if someone couldn't take a joke. That's also known as being insensitive to other people, but hey, "That's just how I am." The only way for growth to happen is if people are actually held accountable for their actions and words. People need to learn how to act and speak and learn that their actions and words do effect people. We can continue to be selfish, or we can try to be gracious. I'm not saying we have to limit ourselves for other people. That can be dangerous, too. But we must find the balance between speaking what we want just for the heck of it, and speaking what is right, for the best purpose. We are designed to grow. We are not meant to be stagnant in any area of our lives. Stagnant water leads to mold. The same is true of humans. Areas that we refuse to grow in, are areas filled with mold. There are too many moldy people in this world. |
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May 2023
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