The Circle of Life

I hate to say it, but sometimes people suck! Okay, I know that’s harsh and I don’t really mean it, but here is what I do mean. Last week I kept running into really rude people. Speeding cars cut me off, store clerks ignored me even though I was standing right in front of them, a pharmaceutical company billed me for medicine I didn’t get and then argued with me that I did get it, and worst of all somebody stole some of my tools while I was renovating a new house I bought in Ladera Ranch. Nobody should ever steal a man’s tools!

I found myself getting really frustrated and losing faith in my fellow man. Normally I am a very positive person who truly believes that most of the people in this world are good and try to do what’s right. But the bad people in this world must have had my number last week…  that is until Friday!

On Friday I took a trip to Home Depot to buy some renovation materials and to replace my tools that were stolen. That one short shopping trip quickly turned my attitude around.

• While shopping for new closet doors, I struggled to lift them onto a cart. A Home Depot employee saw me and came to my aid. When I thanked him for his help, I found out he wasn’t actually an employee, he was vendor cleaning up his product section. Nice of him to come to my aid!
• After going through the Self Check Out Counter, I left the store but heard someone calling after me in the parking lot. Apparently, I had left two items on the counter and a woman chased me down to give them to me. Nice of that lady to go out of her way to help me out!
• As I was loading material into my truck, a guy walked up behind me and told I had dropped some paperwork in the parking lot. It was my “to do list” with a lot of important info on it. Nice of that guy to notice and save me a lot of grief!
• When I arrived at the Ladera Ranch house, the contractor I hired to install new baseboard molding was waiting for me. He said he borrowed my drill and drill bits earlier in the week because his drill battery ran dead. But then he forgot to put them back in the garage. He not only apologized, he gave me a discount on his labor. How nice is that!

I know those four things that happened on Friday might seem inconsequential to most people. But they all happened on the same day, so I think they might have happened for a reason. Maybe I just needed a reminder that sometimes I too... drive too fast, ignore people, make mistakes, and forget to return items. I guess the world isn’t a perfect place and people aren’t ever going to be perfect, but the world is round, so maybe that means… what goes around comes around!

In the circle of life, there are no straight lines.

~ James Dolan

The Right Prescription

There are some good things about getting older, such as maybe getting a little more mature and a little bit wiser. Okay, so that’s about it as far as the good things. The bad things on the other hand can be a long list, including gray hair, wrinkles, hearing problems and declining vision. In my case, my vision has been slowly declining for about a year and it’s been really bugging me. It’s not so bad that I need glasses all the time, but as a highly competitive baseball player, I rely on my vision in order to perform at the highest level. Plus, it can really hurt if you don’t pick up that baseball hurtling 70 miles an hour at your head!

So, I decided to go see an eye doctor. I won’t give you her name but let me just say it didn’t go well at all. A vision test showed me at 20/25 in one eye and 20/30 in the other, which is not too bad, but definitely enough to need prescription sunglasses when playing sports. At her advice I ordered a pair of really nice Oakley prescription sunglasses, which of course took 3 weeks to come in. After they came in and I tried them out, they didn’t help my vision at all. So I took them back, had my vision re-checked, and the eye doctor said, “Whoops, we made a mistake, so we will remake the glasses.” After 3 more weeks a second pair came in and they were even worse than the first pair! When I went back for the third time, I was really upset and let the doctor’s office know it. It isn’t like me to complain but after 6 weeks, and with baseball season already started, I was really frustrated. However, I guess the eye doctor was even more frustrated with me… because she sent me off to see a different doctor in a different office in a different city.

I’m still waiting for my third pair of prescription sunglasses to come in and feeling more frustrated and upset than ever. But then something caught my eye… my Uncle Dick. He is in his 80’s and his vision has become really poor, forcing him to use a cane to feel his way around, which I had never seen him use before. The doctors cannot fix his vision, so he has accepted his situation and is doing the best he can. He was smiling and joking the day I saw him and never once complained about his situation.

And that got me thinking… Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my own problems, wants, needs and desires, that I forget how truly blessed I really am. I am 62 years young, still able to play hard ball baseball with guys half my age, and simply need to find the right sunglasses. Maybe the prescription I need to have filled is the one that enables me to see the “Big Picture”!

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, 

the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me.

~ Anonymous