We leave the house at around 6:25 a.m. during the week. We arrive at school around 6:50 a.m. Today I counted the cars that passed me going the other way. Heading in a different direction. There were 87 cars.
At least 87 people drove past me on my left, heading to work, maybe home, maybe starting their vacation. I don’t know. I don’t even know if there were more people because it is dark at 6:30 in the morning.
What I know for sure is that there are 87 people living out their stories right now. Are those happy stories? Is someone feeling broken-hearted? Did someone start a new job today?
It is easy to get caught up in our lives, the small plot line we create. I can’t tell you how many times I have driven this route to school (OK I can because I blogged about it: From Home to School). But I never really considered all the stories happening around me, until today.
Until I counted the cars passing me going the other way. There are 87 stories that I have not heard, but I hope they are doing well today.
I wonder how many of those 87 cars I’ll pass again tomorrow morning…
I have coached football for almost 30 years. When I teach how to tackle, I teach the player to focus their eyes on the opposing players hips. To keep their head up. They should never see the grass of the field.
I was a running back. I was taught to read my offensive linemen’s numbers. To follow their lead.
I have coached basketball. When a player is dribbling, I instruct them to have their eyes up, never look at the ball.
I have coached every event in track and field. I was a jumper in high school and college. I never looked at the board when jumping. I coach my athletes not to look at the board because the body goes where the eyes go.
But in life, there is another part of ourselves that goes with where the eyes go… that is our heart.
This is important to consider, especially at this moment in our culture. Our eyes are practically glued to screens. As a dad I see parents just sit on a park bench as their child plays. I see it in the hallways of school. I battle everyday to get students to put their phones away. You can see people looking at their phones as they drive.
The heart goes where the eyes go. Just the fact of being locked onto the screen shows what matters to someone. Parents ignore their children, students don’t talk to anyone, people don’t even know when the light changes.
I believe that our actions show what we truly care about. At this moment, I see people care more about their phones than other people, the blue sky, a friend, because their eyes are on a screen. Their heart is for the screen.
I haven’t even discussed what is on the screen, just the action of staring for HOURS a day at a screen. Our heart goes where our eyes go.
We are missing out on relationships, beauty, and a depth to our own lives because we don’t look up. We don’t observe. We don’t think. These actions strengthen our hearts. Good and bad times strengthen our hearts, but only if we look up. Observe the complexity of loving someone. Of striving for a goal. Reacting to another’s tears. We have to see these to feel them.
If you want to know what condition your heart is in, follow where your eyes go.
Over the last two years I have made a number of trips home to Wyoming. Regular readers know why. As I traveled north on I-25 I always enjoyed seeing the mountains in the west. When the sky is just blue, Laramie Peak cuts a wonderful scene against the sky.
Like many people, I think about how cool the view would be from the top of the mountain.
I am not much of a mountain climber, but there are lots of people who have that drive. According to a number of different sources, about 800 people reach the summit of Mount Everest each year, even though Mount Everest is the deadliest mountain to climb. It has a death zone that starts at the elevation of 8,000 meters. Twelve percent of the deaths over the years are from exhaustion.
On my walk I was thinking about trying to go home this summer, and then I started to think about the past trips and the mountain range (and actually of the handful of poems I’ve written from those trips). In one of those magical moments where ideas lead to ideas and then to connections, I thought about how we use climbing a mountain as a symbol of reaching our personal goals.
And why the symbolism works.
Everyone loves the view of their goals as they travel the road of everyday living. We think about how great the view of life would be when we reach those goals. But that thought is not enough to motivate most of us to actually put on our gear and start climbing.
I’ll use Mount Everest as an example for reaching our goals.
First is time. On average it takes 6 – 10 weeks to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Part of the reason is to safely adjust to the altitude.
There are milestones and adjustments when striving for a goal. Be it time, sacrifices, or even self development. Trying to fulfill a dream takes a commitment of time that we sometimes don’t want to give. It’s easier to continue on the highway and look at the goal on the horizon.
Second factor is the cost. Just the license to climb Mount Everest is $11,000 from the government of Nepal. Also, there is the cost of equipment and the Sherpas’ services to reach the top.
The cost of reaching a goal varies for sure. But I am in the red for the total amount I have paid for gas, bookmarks, and postage compared to how much I’ve made selling books, and it’s not even close.
Then there is the cost of pain, physical and emotional. While climbing Mount Everest, climbers will experience altitude sickness, fatigue, and the weather conditions can change quickly. I can’t even imagine how many times they have to deal with the voice in their head telling them to give up. Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first climbers to reach the summit, said, “It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
Isn’t this true for everyone who strives to reach their goals? It is one of the most important reasons to go after our goals. There is a reason why we have a dream. It is connected to our spirit, it is a reflection of who we can be. So, even if we never fully reach the summit of our goals, we become the person we can be by striving for that goal.
It’s easy to just drive past the mountain ranges as we travel this life. Gaze at their majestic beauty. Think about the view from the top, how wonderful it would be, but keep the cruise control on.
Or go after that dream that beckons you. There is an exit coming up that will take you to the base of the mountain. It has always been there, just like the mountain range.
As many of you have, we have a route we take every day to school in the morning, then follow the route in reverse from school to home. It’s part of the daily routine. It takes about 15 minutes to get to school, 30 minutes round trip. That’s if there is only one trip that day.
Yesterday, I made three trips to school and back. At the moment we only have one car. So, my daughter had morning basketball practice. I dropped her off and returned home to get the rest of the crew for school. At the end of the day we went home, then to my junior high daughter’s game in a nearby town. After her game we returned home, but I had to go out to school to get my other daughter who was making sugar skulls for her Spanish Club.
We finally settled down at home after 8 o’clock last night.
It got me thinking about how many times I have traveled the streets from home to school and back again.
So, being conservative (I did not include summer or holiday breaks or even weekends when I come to my classroom to grade.) I calculated some numbers.
We have lived in our home for about 12 years. My oldest son started junior high around that time. In those 12 years… again conservative numbers.
I have traveled 33,000 miles on just that route.
Adding up the time… 84 days traveling that route! If I started driving back and forth from home to school to home without stopping today, I would drive that route continually until Jan 31, 2024.
It’s been a hard year. Even now my wife’s side of the family is dealing with another tragic moment. Time and the importance of my life have been factors that trouble my soul, but as I thought about this small moment, driving to school, I realized two things.
One: Life happens in the smallest moments. Singing songs, laughing at my bad dad jokes, venting about a bad day, getting a blueberry muffin at the coffee shop as a surprise, all these moments are the moments that weave the fabric of my life. The quality of my day is elevated in this routine. The bonds with my children and my wife are built in these small moments.
Two: There are no throw away moments in life. Our daily life has routines that fill lots of time, usually in small chunks. But it adds up. To be honest, this was something I thought about as I listened to my dad talk about mom at her graveside. How a life is not defined by the big moments. A life is the individual strands of yarn we weave together to make a tapestry of living. If we do it well, others can find warmth and comfort by wrapping it around their shoulders.
Today, we only have two trips to make. I have some new dad jokes to tell during the trip.
6:42 a.m. Aug 25, 2022. The day my wife, two daughters, and I almost died.
The story is not uncommon, sadly. And it is a simple one. I was at a light waiting to turn left across a four lane street. (This is what made the moment an almost moment.). The light changes green for me and I start my turn. I am moving across the lane closest to us, turning the wheel, when I noticed the lights of a semi truck flying toward us in the next lane. There was a minivan stopped at the light, but the truck wasn’t even slowing down. I slammed on the brakes and watch as the truck then cattle trailer streaked by in front of us. Our headlights reflecting back to us. I don’t think the driver even saw us.
It was dead silent in the car as I took a breath and continued across the intersection, headed to a “normal” day at school. We were that close to having everything change in our life. I am writing this at 7:18 a.m. and I can’t shake the weight of that almost moment.
On Saturday I pulled into the garage after returning from Lincoln. The odometer read 171,201 miles. And that was just for this minivan, which we purchased in 2014 when we found out that we were having our sixth child. At the time it was the only minivan that had 8 seats. Our first minivan had over 80,000 miles on it.
My heart was full of memories driving home from watching my son’s basketball team play in the state title game. The team earned the runner-up trophy, but the hardest part of the day was knowing that my son’s career was over and that we wouldn’t be traveling for his basketball games. My wife and I talked about how many times we traveled I-80 to Lincoln, or Omaha, or Minneapolis, or Chicago, because of basketball.
But those 171,201 miles represent more than basketball trips. They represent college visits two years ago, traveling on mini family vacations to the Omaha zoo. My wife and I have traveled to marching band competitions, honor band performances, and art award ceremonies.
Yes, part of parenthood is spending time on the road to support your children’s activities, and we have spent a lot of time on the road. But many of the miles also represent our Saturday trips to the library where we would play games before we checked out books. We rack up miles every weekend grocery shopping. There are miles on the odometer that are from simple date nights of DQ treats and parking at the lake to talk.
Over the last seven years, the minivan has taken us 171,201 miles. What that number doesn’t show is the memories of the places we have been. You can’t feel the panic of driving in all the different weather conditions, or the near miss of an accident in Chicago. The miles can’t show the funny view of every child asleep with their heads at odd angles in the back, or see us all jamming out to the song playing before a basketball game. Every season there was a new song.
The miles don’t express the love between me and my wife. We have traveled most of the 171,201 miles together. We have laughed, cried, and been exhausted as we’ve traveled these roads, but we have driven them together.
I am still amped-up. Less than 30 minutes ago I was almost in a serious accident.
This is a diagram of downtown Hastings, which has a number of one way streets. Second street is a one way street (west to east) downtown. I had to drop off some mail at the post office this morning. I was heading south on Colorado, which is one way also. There is a light at the intersection of Second and Colorado, but it only faces the traffic flow of the one way streets. I was half a block away from the intersection when the light turned green. My lane has a green arrow (Colorado turns into two-way traffic after the light) and I slow down a little to make the turn. The roads are still snow packed from the snow storm on Sunday. That’s when I notice the headlights of a beer truck coming the wrong way on Second street, right where I am supposed to turn.
I wish I could tell you everything slowed down in my mind and I handled the situation like a hero. It didn’t. I remember everything now. But at that moment everything seemed to move into hyper drive.
I could see the truck’s left turn signal blinking on the hood of the truck. I remember thinking in my head, “What is he doing?” because he doesn’t seem to be stopping. There is no traffic light for him because he is traveling the wrong way on the Second street.
Decisions. Choices. Sometimes we see the results of our decisions immediately. Sometimes the effects of our decisions manifest themselves later; maybe a minute, a day, a year, or sometimes never. Making a decision can be a heavy responsibility… in fact every decision we make actually creates the life we live. And most of the time our decisions affects other people’s’ lives. I don’t know when the driver of the truck decided to drive down the wrong way. I don’t know why he chose to do it. Maybe he didn’t want to navigate the extra turns it takes to get through all the one way streets downtown, so he decided to take a short cut. What I do know is that his decisions and my decisions (to drop of the mail and drive down a certain street) was about to meet at the intersection of Second and Colorado.
I decide not to slam on the brakes to try to stop. The intersection was snow packed and helped me in this case. I was able to drift into the right lane on Second street. Missing the truck who also decided not to stop and turned left onto Colorado to drive away. I came to a stop to watch his taillights disappear at the corner of a building.
Decisions. Choices. Some of them seem more important than others. But in reality, every one of them matters. Everyone of them makes an impact in our lives. Makes an impact on other people’s’ lives. This morning I am glad that the driver’s choices and mine did not collide, literally.
At times we can be on the right road, but that doesn’t mean traveling through life is easy, sometimes we come across our own personal fog.
I stopped this morning to take the picture above. You can just see the fog covering the road. Sometimes the fog fades quickly as you drive, but other times you have to slow down because the fog is so thick and lasts for the whole commute.
Fog is a cloud made of tiny water droplets that is suspended in the atmosphere. In life our fog is made up fear, doubt, self-criticism and other negative emotions. And sometimes that fog just rolls in without any notice. That makes life hard, even when we are on the right road.
So, how do we get through our own fog?
First, understand that most of the time the fog dissipates. Emotions come and go. We can wake up in a bad mood, but by the end of the day we are having a better day. No particular reason why, just that time passed.
Other times, especially with doubt, fear, or being critical, the fog has to be driven through. You have to focus on your driving, in the case for life it can be your goals that you stay focused on. As a track coach I would talk with my athletes about the voice in their head telling them to stop, or slow down. That voice can be loud, but it can be defeated by focusing on their workout, understanding how the pain was building strength to achieve their goals.
Driving through fog is not easy, but it can be done. Give yourself time and focus on your life, your goals, and you will make it to your destination.
It is January, that means winter driving. That means snow ruts.
Last weekend was one of those times when we were running around town all day. Groceries, Speech Meet, kids visiting friends, it felt like I was in the car more than in my house. Even the main roads were still a mess and as I navigated the snow ruts I got to thinking.
When a storm hits, ruts actually help navigate your path. The ruts give a clear path to drive in. It is the safest path to follow during the storm and right after the storm. But then something happens to that safety.
As time goes on the winter ruts become dangerous in two ways. When the storm passes and the sun starts to shine again, ruts become filled with slush that then becomes ice as the days progress. Trying to stop for a light or stop sign becomes dangerous because the ruts are filled with ice. You have to move outside the rut to gain grip on the tires so that you can stop.
The other way that ruts become a hazard is when the ruts become so deep you scrape the undercarriage of your car. Sometimes the snow storms come one after another, building up the snow on the ground and roads. Again, the winter ruts help at the beginning, but soon the ruts are so deep you can’t get out of them. You have to alter your route because you can’t turn on a secondary street because you can’t get out of the rut.
Last Saturday I thought about this as I ran all over town. And as so often happens I thought about how the ruts of life work the same way.
Ruts are helpful to show us the way, specially in our personal storms. But after time, ruts become dangerous. They can keep us doing the same thing for so long we can’t get out of the ruts without a drastic change in course. Or our life becomes filled with issues that won’t allow us to stop, unless we make a drastic change in course. Even more, the ruts of life are not so easy to see, but so safe to travel.
For all the hours I’ve spent on the road, all the years living in Nebraska and Wyoming, I have never hit a deer or an antelope. I have had a number of other car accidents, but I’ve always spotted the deer while driving before anything bad could happen. Until this morning…
Right now, it is completely dark for most of my commute. This morning the moon accompanied me on my drive. I was in between Doniphan and the interstate (as the picture below shows). Things were going fine, music on, cruise set, and I was checking traffic to decide when to go into the left lane so I could merge onto the interstate. I just crossed the bridge when the deer appeared.
Image from Google Maps
I was still in the right lane when the deer appeared on the passenger side, just in the fading part of the headlights. Both of us were caught in that eternal second. Because of the light the deer looked like a ghost, faded, almost transparent. I could see his head snap back and his black eyes widen. I swear his expression was, “What the….”
I did nothing. Which was the best thing. The deer and I caught up with time. It seemed my car lurched forward to do it, getting ahead of the deer to miss him. I looked into my review mirror but could not see if he crossed the road or not.
No matter how much we try, we cannot control Life. We have control of our attitude, or work ethic, and our smile. But Life, it is like a box of Ping-Pong balls dumped out on a concrete floor. We will get knocked around, sometimes drastically. This got me thinking about dictionaries…
As an English teacher I forever get the question, “How do you spell that?” I would always respond with directions to the bookshelf where the dictionaries sat waiting to be opened. Even when my students had computers I would get that question. At a time when answers are sometimes just a click away, why did my students still ask that question?
I think part of the shift we are experiencing, in school and our own lives, must include the ability to react (or know when not to in my case) to Life. That is a grand statement, but I’m not sure I have had a whole day where something didn’t go wrong. Where a Ping-Pong ball didn’t knock something off track. Or a deer run out in front of you. Are you prepared to react, to adapt? Are students prepared?
It is all Connected 