I can remember stuffing a handful of baseball cards into my back pocket and throwing a tennis ball over the shoulder of my neighbor, Erik. He would stand in front of me in the driveway, between myself and the house, and I would throw the ball over him, bounce it off the house and his role was to catch it. If he caught it, whichever player’s card I had pulled out of pocket for that “at bat” would be out. If he didn’t catch it, my guy would get a single. Three outs and you switch. Driveway baseball. Being a kid. Not having a care in the world.
And then one day you wake up and you’re 48.
Driveways and baseballs. BB guns in the backyard. Cigarettes behind the house. Hopping fences and playing video games until our thumbs hurt. We didn’t have identities because we didn’t need them. We were kids and that’s all we needed to be.
Life isn’t fucking hard. Wake up, be nice, treat people with respect, hold your word and do the best you can. What happens in the margins of all that is where things get slippery.
People collect expectations and they don’t communicate them.
People make assumptions and they don’t check them.
People conclude judgements without collecting all of the data.
People become adults and the game starts up and everyone tries to resolve whatever thing it is that stole them away from being a kid and how they get there usually pulls in other people and it usually involves matters of the heart and the soul and it gets sticky and icky and problematic and identities get squishy and people squirm and slither around trying to make themselves feel some kind of way about who they are or who they thought they were or who they’re trying to be or trying not to be or running from or running toward. People are busy being people and it gets exhausting for everyone until it doesn’t.
Love deeply. Do the work. Show up when you can’t and whatever happens happens.
There is no road map. Throw the ball, take the out or the single.