It changed my life from the moment I no longer had to get up to change the channel and what have I become since the advent of the remote control’s grandchild, the digital video recorder (DVR)? I could say I watched the Lakers get stomped by the Thunder in last night’s game 4 of the NBA playoffs but I didn’t. I literally watched the first quarter without commercials then the rest of the game by speeding through via the x4 speed of fast forwarding. I was looking at the bottom of the screen at the score to see if the Lakers were going to rally but they didn’t. The game got out of control and apparently I’ve acquiesced so to the convenience of DVR that I’ve become less of a fan. Maybe a real fan watches last night’s game just to play the role of couch coach, figuring out how the debacle ensued. Not me. I was content with watching the game in 15 minutes simply because…I can now. I judged the Lakers, upset because the series is now tied 2-2 but at least they played the whole game. I’m sure that took longer than 15 minutes. I gave up in a sense, opting to catch up on other pre-recorded shows from last week. I miss Chick Hearn. Maybe that’s why they invented DVR.
Excuse the graphic metaphor in the title but that is what this world is. Now for some ready examples of what the heck I’m referring to.
#1 Church Shark Water – I am humbled by the love I believe Jesus Christ exhibited on the cross whether others believe it or not. However, I am embarrassed by how little churchgoers care for fellow humans in a meaningful way. Sure there’s pity as in, “we churchgoers ought to go help the poor and disenfranchised once or twice a year for it is our duty as the superior creatures.” Churchgoers like myself are also often guilty of self-consumption. That is to say that we want you to know what’s going on at our churches though we couldn’t care any less than we do right now for whatever it is you’re doing. We parade our buildings, our smoke machines, our burgeoning youth programs that boast big numbers with high turnover to match. In other words, the church in America is really proud of itself and won’t dare be criticized for its narcicism.
#2 Business Shark Water is waded in by most all of us in some way, shape or form. You don’t even have to have a job to know what I mean but here’s an example of the pervasive and perilous world of dollars and cents. SAMPLE SCENARIO: The phone rings, I pick up and my digital television satellite provider is trying to offer me a new deal. I say, “No thanks” so that seller can move on to someone who might be interested but she won’t have any of that. She’ll try two or three counter moves to arrest my willingness to listen after I’ve said NO more than I care to. Everybody in the business world I know says that’s good business. On the contrary, if I have to raise my voice at a “phone shark”, how can that be good business? Sounds more like manipulation.
#3 Social Shark Water entails scores of situations and examples but you can examine your own habits to see if you fit the shark criteria. Symptoms include but are not limited to:
- Talking to someone you haven’t seen in awhile and not asking them what projects they’re working on or where their interests lie
- Justifying your impersonal demeanor by saying, “I’m just not good with people.” (fool, we live on a planet full of people.”)
- Selling something you wouldn’t buy yourself because it’s lucrative and maintains your lifestyle
- Threatening people because leverage is more expedient than negotiation
- Assuming that those who no longer belong to your clique have fallen from grace
- etc…
The old adage of, “Don’t bleed in the water” is actually true in the real world of shark infested waters. Experts say that sharks can smell blood from more than a mile away. And it’s not the hunger, since some sharks are said to be able to go months without eating. Real shark attacks on swimmers and divers are actually pretty rare with your chances being somewhere around 1 in 11.5 million according to the International Shark Attack File. If only the human variety was more infrequent.
The Lakers aren’t a young team; they’re a seasoned team with some young guys mixed in. The Oklahoma City Thunder is a young team. They start a bunch of high flying pups who should still be in college. The starting five for the Thunder has less than 35 games of playoff experience combined compared to Kobe and Derek Fisher who have 177 respectively. But give the advantage to the youngstas because they had upwards of 18 blocked shots against the elder champions. In the end, they were a 3-pointer away from overtime and nearly upended the second most storied franchise in NBA history.
What happened last night? The Lakers had the equivalent of a mid-life crisis basketball style. But instead of dying chest hair black, buying a bunch a jewelry and staying out all hours of the night, the analogy is maintained by the Lakers’ attempt at up tempo basketball. There were several frenetically placed bursts where the Lakers didn’t act their age as they forced fast breaks and underestimated the cat-like reflexes of their opponents. It’s like playing your little brother or sister and treating him/her like it’s still last year when they were weaker and intimidated by your mere presence. Think again ma brothas of purple and gold lore. The Atlanta Hawks you are not. The Lakers are not even the Golden State Warriors but rather an extremely skilled team with a rare combination of veteran championship experience and uh…three 7-footers who alter shots. The Laker fast break is, in two words, Shannon Brown. Aside from that, they are a half court team.
Just one more reminder that accepting who you are is not the same as accepting who you think you are. Oscar Wilde may have said it best, “To get back one’s youth one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”
Reversal of Fortune is the name of a documentary my wife and I viewed back in 2006 that chronicled the life of a homeless man in Pasadena who stumbles upon $100,000 (U.S.). Eerily we watched as the personality of a man named Ted shifted from that of a fairly humble, content hustler to an ungrateful pleasure seeking fool. He epitomized the rags-to-riches and back to rags story that we occasionally hear about in which someone gets a lot of liquid wealth so quickly that they choke on it. The caveat in this story, however, was that Ted was offered help and refused it. It would have been quite cruel to film a guy knowing he’d squander his new found fortune but the documentarians saw fit to bring in advocates for homeless men like Ted to help him manage his funds and get off the streets permanently.But sudden wealth has an allure all its own, with emphasis on the sudden, and it either lurks when it arrives or offers a glimpse into one’s potential.
When something lurks, that means it looms or loiters nearby as a sign of impending doom. But sudden wealth, for instance, doesn’t have to lurk if you’re prepared for it – that is, if you have developed the character needed to appropriate such wealth. What got me thinking about this idea was something I read this morning about how we so-called Christians slander God. He tells us we can, with His Spirit, and we say, “No, I can’t.” It’s like a homeless man being given a sack full of loot only to blow it because he really doesn’t think he’s capable of more.
There’s not so much wrong with an unexpected sum of money, an impromptu promotion or an unusual availability of much needed resources. On the contrary, there is something wrong with us not believing that such gifts stand to move us on toward our potential. Grown-ups often go on and on about how, “Young people don’t know their own potential.” Maybe it’s time to be on the watch for the opportunity that fuels the potential of which the grown-ups spoke.
Mobs of people intrigue me because I don’t think they’re comprised of angry people, by-and-large. Mobs of people are comprised of ordinary folks with one common proclivity, thirst for power.
It takes a lot of gumption to resist joining any mob. The mob has everything you want – built in approval sources, seemingly indomitable momentum and the ability to supress dissenting viewpoints through intimidation. Haven’t you ever tried to appeal to a mob? I did on Sunday as I tried to converse with the opposing team in my Fraternity basketball game to stop with the insults and the instigating. I addressed my team in the first half of the game when I noticed them losing control. Then I turned my attention, near game’s end, to our opponents. To my knowledge, these were guys about the same age as me (34) or older. Some may have been slightly younger. But they were certainly all African-American as was my team and mob mentality appeared to prevail. There was profuse profanity, threatening language and ostentatious displays of pseudo-superiority that would make male peacocks envious. I reiterate that my team was guilty of it as well but there were more of “them”. Besides, I’m biased and it makes for a good story when you make your adversary the clear villain.
At any rate, I fought the mob with logic, an appeal to conscience. I was rewarded with a swarm of mob members semi-circling me as I talked in a low tone, urging the men to see our commonality and not treat their fraternity like a gang membership. I’m objective about the low tone part too. After all, who willingly incites the mob to swing the clubs they have in tow? I like walking away from a gym with all my teeth. I also like not being embarrassed in front of my wife. I tried to stay out of the realm of inciting and disrespect understanding fully that in the land of “MANDOM” respect is a currency that spends well. I tried not to denigrate and condescend but for all my trying, the mob won out. It was a game that didn’t even count toward our record in league play but we lost, first because the mob mentality defeated both teams and second because we just played bad basketball.
At day’s end though, mobs run the planet. You fight ’em because the members of a mob deserve your effort. The human being was never meant to be a mob member but rather a uniquely gifted contributor to this world. You fight the mob to disintegrate it and you disintegrate it by finding the one mob member who isn’t sure why he joined. You show him respect, find the common ground between he and yourself and you hope the sensibility spreads. The mob is only dangerous as long as delusion reigns supreme so whether it’s basketball or the people with torches outside your window, know that IT won’t hear you because no one ever had a conversation with a mob.
I don’t know what it takes to get an NCAA athletics scholarship but I know what it takes to make a kid play like he/she is on scholarship. The sad part is when I’m too arrogant to share those insights without a snide jab as an appetizer. Case in Point: I rolled out to my Alma Mater Chapman University in Orange, California on Tuesday for my weekly dosage of college level basketball, my brand of cardio. I’m not that 5K guy. At any rate, I’m friends with one of the young bulls on the team who’s going into his senior year and he was looking for help related to gaining muscle mass, about 15-17 pounds worth. So I told him, “Ma dude, just match your weight in protein grams, modify your workout to strength cycle and it’s done, .” He’d counter with something like, “Uh, I’m a cereal guy, low on funds with no real cooking skills.” The college bachelor he is. And I stood there deriding a 21-year old with clownish quips about how simple it is to eat, log what you eat and do it consistently. He was asking me how to even track protein intake. “What does the right diet look like Norm? If I go to Subway once-a-day what can I eat?” I looked at him like he had a third arm. Then about 20 minutes into it all I realized he was serious. He really was in need of help. I had forgotten what it’s like to eat Hamburger Helper everyday because you work nine hours-a-week and go in-and-out of class comas because you stayed up all night writing a paper assigned three months ago. My young friend is just that…young. How the old forget or worse yet, how we grow impatient and conceited with our full gas tanks, satiated appetites and wisdom via multiple trials in error. That day I was reminded of something I learned when I was five years old. SHARE…
I talk about myself a lot because it’s easier than doing what I used to do (talking at length and critically about others). So, when I waxed less than eloquent about the Push becoming the Shove yesterday, I thought about all of the times I felt outmatched. It came up perhaps because I find myself thinking often about the appetite I acquired for the various currencies that spend in American society. There’s fame or notoriety, money, prowess and status. From the time you set foot on the playground, the scramble for one or all of those ensues.If you’re not careful, the quest consumes you whether your realize your objectives or not. But I ended yesterday asking myself and all o’ y’all where or how you find the resolve needed to shove back when the pretentious, inanimate vices lure you into the hedonistic life. God is how I answer, more specifically Jesus Christ and the reason is because the Jesus I’ve met as an adult isn’t afraid of tension, frustration, sin, lethargy, procrastination, etc. Somewhere along the quest we’re all on I shook my fist at God for prayers answered “NO”. I’ve taken theology to task along with tradition and found Jesus in the tension. In fact, it’s become easier to shove back when life threatens because historically Jesus shrewdly packed more life into 3 years of ministry than I have in 34 years of breathing. So…the shove I need is found in the Jesus who is in the heart of the alcoholic, convict, prostitute, etc. thinking they’re too weak to shove back because addiction and indiscretion mopped up the floor wit ’em. Surely a God who puts the dog in the fight must have put some fight in the dog.