The Barest Minimum

$457,588 is the minimum salary for rookies during the upcoming 2009-2010 NBA basketball season. That’s gross income of course. One more year and the incremental increase moves to $736,420. After that, it gets disheartening for us average folks…average given how hard most people work everyday to make ends meet. Salary.com reports that the average teacher’s salary is roughly $50K. This could tailspin into a post about overpaid athletes but that’s not where I’m going.

You see that photo to the left? I can’t remember the name of the road in that English town we were riding through but I snapped a picture with my phone and that’s what came out. The clearest thing in the photo is the road on which we were traveling and the distorted portion is the foliage along the way that, even out of focus, makes the image captivating. The green in England is what this hastily taken shot brings to mind. It’s greener than any California native shrubbery, no disrespect to my home state. We live in a freakin’ desert. But there was a stillness, an exotic but welcoming peace in that lush beauty along the paved road. The speed we were traveling caused the photo to turn out the way it did and all because I didn’t bring my real camera on the basketball touring trip for which I coached in the summer of 2008.

With all due respect, the road has an attractiveness of its own for without it, travel in the vehicle is far more difficult. But the road is kind of like the exorbitant salary that rookies can demand. It is the thing for which high school boys lust and yet it’s like the road, alluring in its own right but superficially pale in comparison to what adorns the highway. It’s kind of a reminder to me of how we take for granted the $0 – $50K job because we perceive limitations. A rookie says to himself that all his problems are eradicated because his entry level salary is equal to a lifetime of earnings for an entire village in far reaches of the planet. That’s not to say he should regret accepting what his hard work and skills have afforded him. Hey, if the market will pay you well to do what you do, assuming what you do is both legal and ethical, than by all means do it. The point is to not focus so much on the road/highway that you miss the natural decor of life that existed long before your dream was realized. In England there was real Fish&Chips, J-2-0, Cricket, crisply spoken English, Round-Abouts instead of stop signs, no flies, hospitality and thousands of years of history. The asphalt road had little to do with those things but the “green” was meshed together with all of them.

There are successes and stresses in the worlds of teens and adults, both of which arrest your attention turning it to the road. IT’S A TRAP! Ironically the road is a means to end no different than the car you drive and yet we worship those too. We have become fascinated with fabrication but whether you’re an athlete navigating the waters of Division I college life, the NBA or just dealing with twin girls who don’t sleep simultaneously or for very long, you do well to appreciate the distorted trees in the image. Unlike my JPEG, if you wish to get a clearer look tomorrow, you can always take your foot off the gas pedal or even pull over carefully to capture life so it doesn’t blur past ya.