I love words. Here are some of my favorite ones ever spoken: “There will be an answer. Let it be. – The Beatles……....“I did it my way.” – Frank Sinatra…..…. “Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey……....“I read, much of the night, and go south for the winter.” – T.S. Eliot…….“Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.” – Woody Allen……….“All good books have one thing in common. They are truer than if they had actually happened.” – Ernest Hemingway……….“Would a journey not be worth taking if at the end of which, in the other world, we were delivered from all the pretend judges here? – Plato, Apology……….“You are my only love. You have me completely in your power. I know and feel that if I am to write anything noble and find in the future I shall do so only by listening at the doors of your heart.” – James Joyce to Nora……….“Basically I’m for whatever gets you through the night. But it prayer, tranquillizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels.” – Frank Sinatra………. “He [Shakespeare] was not of an age, but for all time.” – Ben Janson in To My Beloved Master William Shakespeare………. “We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl. Year after year. Running over the same old ground, what have we found? The same old fears?” – Pink Floyd………. “We live as we dream. Alone.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness……….”Yet now I must confess, that duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France.” – Shakespeare, Hamlet………. “I’ve always known myself, but he was the first one to recognize me. And the first to love what he saw.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre………. “There is only the fight to recover what has been lost. There is only the trying.” – T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets……… “The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth and a truth which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato’s or Aristotle’s definitions, strictly like that of Antigone of Sophocles?” – Ralph Waldo Emerson…… “The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the face of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.” – Marge Peircy………. “It’s a fierce game I’ve joined because its being played anyway, a game of both skill and chance, played against unseen adversary – the conditions of time—in which the payoffs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment, might as well come to me as anyone else.” – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek………. “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” – Charlotte Bronte………. “All one has to do to be a writer is write. We’re writers only when we’re writing.” – Alan Shapiro

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Cheap Metaphors and Lessons Learned - PGA Tournament 2009




I’m not writing this article as a golf fan. Which I am.

I’m writing it as a fan of dreams-coming-true stories. And aren’t we all?

As one announcer said, “it ended with a Yang.” He must have been an English major. :)

Today was the 91st annual PGA golf tournament. I was in Hazeltine, Minnesota for all the final round action. As far as professional golf competitions go, I guess I always cheer for the underdog. These days it seems like everyone has decided Woods is going to win before a single ball is hit.

Today belonged to South Korea’s Y.E. Yang. Even the avid golf tournament viewer probably had never heard of him. I know I hadn’t.

This guy started the game when he was 19 years old. 19. That’s almost unheard of in this setting. He’s golfed for 15 years and just beat Tiger Woods in a Sunday round of a major tournament. Tiger won his first Major at 21. Yang got his first par at 22. That's just incredible.

But enough about golf.

It seems like with every year that passes, doors close for us. Without our permission. It seems like if you are going to be The Best at any given sport, instrument, or hobby—if you are going to compete with the Tiger Woods’s of the world-- you should either:

a) be a child prodigy, or
b) your parents had better have started you in class when you were 3.

Today I am reminded that isn’t true. Time doesn’t dictate what we can or cannot do. (WARNING: cheap, overused metaphors to follow.) The doors might be closed, but they’re not locked. And you just might have the key. That one is almost too cheesy to actually publish on a blog, but apparently I have no shame. And hey, just be thankful that I’m not going into a soapbox rant about how the “keys” are Attitude, Practice, etc . I’ll leave that to Hallmark.

Just try to remember that it’s not too late to be great at something you never thought you could do. Just ask Yang, Susan Boyle, or the newest lead singer of Journey.
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