Most Chinese restaurants seem to have the same basic decoration. The chairs only seem to vary in the pattern of the vinyl upholstery. The pictures of the food look almost identical up on the menu board. It’s almost as if they are all part of a chain like McDonald’s. Despite the similarities of the furniture, the food is what separates the good from the bad. In the past I know that I’ve gone out of my way to go to the “good” Chinese restaurant. That distinction was never about the decoration or the koi fish swimming in the fake pond with a waterfall. The good restaurant distinguished itself by making better food once it got the furniture in.
In so many areas people are losing sight of the fact that being better is necessary. As a coach and a teacher, the overwhelming sense that I get is that most people only put forth effort to be “good enough”. Good enough to make varsity. Good enough to pass. Good enough to graduate. This would be fine if their desires matched their effort. Unfortunately too many people expect great results from their mediocre effort. They expect adulation for just showing up. Success should be as easy to get as ‘likes’ on Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook. Showing up is the starter kit, performing consistently high level enough for people to notice is the key.
So don’t rely on the starter kit. You already have a bunch of them. Life is the restaurant space. Your limbs and senses are the chairs and tables. Some people are performing even without those advantages that you have. All of the window dressing in the world is not going to move your business forward if you don’t make better food. In your life, that could be any action that you take: studying, interacting with people, selling, playing or anything else. You need to put forth the effort to at least be better than you used to be. Otherwise you’ll end up as another forgotten place in a strip mall.
The trilogy is not truly the king of cinema but rather stack-able stories. There’s no magical power to the number three. The key component to the greatest movie series is the way that the stories fit together and one movie can be catapulted based on the strengths of its predecessor. While I’m a huge movie fan and have been since my childhood, there is something that’s missing from the great movies that are being released today. Kids aren’t stacking them into their own lives.
The traditional wedding vows read something like this “I, ___, take you, ___, for my lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do we part.” While I have no problem with anyone making this vow (I made it), perhaps some people might want to change it up in order to better represent the signs of the times. Something like the following might be appropriate for some people today.
It was around 1988 when I started making the phone calls. On Friday nights, it was my job to call all of the players/parents from my soccer team. The information that I had to tell them was where the game was and what time the “caravan” was leaving A&P’s parking lot. It wasn’t a fun job but it was a necessary one to make sure that everyone got to the game. Today we have TeamSnap and other services to take care of this job. While I’m sure that my fourteen year old self would have jumped at the chance to have this service available. I’m glad that I suffered through that weekly chore.
I had blood all over me. I didn’t know where I was. It was the coldest that I’d ever been in my life. I couldn’t see a thing. All that I could do was scream. Luckily help was nearby and I was able to calm down. It had been a difficult trial but I was alive and in the hospital. Just when things seemed as if they would be OK, a complete stranger came along and chopped off a quarter of my penis. All of that trauma happened in the first twenty four hours of my life. Despite that very rough beginning, I’ve done quite well for myself.
Bob was a guy that I worked with at the garbage company during my summer vacation from college. He was a driver on one of the recycling trucks. Funny as hell! His stories were legendary and wit was razor sharp. After working for the company for at least 15 years, he could tell you everything that was wrong with it. He knew why the routes didn’t work, how the company had been stupid to buy this new brand of truck and every other problem that the company had. He loved to vent. The problem was that Bob couldn’t prevent. He couldn’t let the bosses know about the challenges before they came up. His ability was after the fact and didn’t carry much value. I’m not sure if Bob retired yet or if he’s still there but wherever he is, I’m sure he’s still venting about something.
Traffic lights are used to help keep us safe and even though we heed them, we tend not to give them much thought. I chose a black and white photo to keep people honest. The yellow is in the middle but which color is on bottom and which is on top? You’ve got a 50/50 chance. Check below……
The story of Superman becomes very boring without Kryptonite. A man who is super strong, fast, invulnerable, can fly and shoots lasers from his eyes is not a compelling story. His abilities make him unbeatable. So defeating evil-doers is not a matter of ability, it’s a matter of time. Without Kryptonite, Superman’s story becomes one of an interplanetary janitor who is here to clean up our biggest societal messes. A completely infallible hero is difficult to sell but exposing his Achilles heel makes him a star.
Don Quixote is a fictional character famous for fighting windmills and doing other absurd things. His basic story is one of taking a fantasy world and trying to imprint it onto the real world. The results are comedic for the outsider but almost tragic for Quixote himself. As I was reading his story in college, I always pictured him sitting Indian style in his armor with a child’s toy box trying to hammer the square peg into the round hole. It is easy to label Don Quixote as a “fool” but personally I identified strongly with the character and his trials. Around the time that I read the book, I was on my own Quixotic adventure that put my mental image of the world into question.
It’s one of my favorite lines from a song by one of my favorite bands “Your actions speak so loud, I can’t hear a word your saying!” The song is called “I want to conquer the world” and it juxtaposes the idealism and the reality of people. It’s a punk rock song and due to soccer’s historical underground following in the US, I usually equate the two on a few levels. At the moment, the youth soccer world is caught in an almost Jekyll and Hyde scenario. Many of the positives of the sport that is loved by millions are regularly mangled and deranged in the pursuit of momentary glory. In each paragraph, I will start with the ideal and follow it with the real.
Huryk Unlimited 