Isn’t it funny how time distorts things?
Like a half-empty glass set over newsprint it stretches things here and it condenses things there.
I spent much of last week watching high school basketball players sprint up and down the court and a part of me wondered if they really knew how lucky they are.
Here they are, focusing strictly on sports with their parents and community cheering them on and they have the luxury of dedicating hours to a game—how cool is that?
For most of them, there will never be another period in their lives that duplicates these moments. Soon enough there will be kids and bills, marriages and mortgages to worry about. As I sat there, separated by a 3 X5 view finder, I longed for my hay-day when I was pushing myself to be the best that I could.
I wanted to be off the sidelines and in the game.
I wondered what great things I could accomplish if I threw down my camera, and jumped into the game and demanded the rock on the low block. A delusional fantasy of myself sprinting up and down the court and gliding to the hoop crowded the space between my two ears.
Forget drafting Oden or Durant—draft me.
Never mind the fact that I would be dropping lungs instead of threes if I got back on the court; I still wanted to go back and squeeze every last drop out of my time in between the buzzers of every quarter.
I imagined myself to be great.
I imagined myself to be dedicated.
Suddenly it was a distinct reality that I was a sports legend in my high school days (far from it) and that I held records that crowded out the white on walls (actually I only have one).
Then I realized that I had stopped watching the games, I had stopped doing my job.
So I took a deep breath and wiped my hands off on my pants and got back to clicking a camera.
Time is a pretty funny thing. Add a little bit of it to anything and you can get something completely new.
Childhood? Sprinkle on a few years and suddenly it was either super hard (walking to school, up hills both ways) or it is ecstatically happy (oh, those were the days).
Mix time up with a sports reporter and suddenly you get a history of how amazing he was back in the day. Soaking up the moment is key to enjoying life but dang-it I just wanted the high school glory again for a second.
Kids playing basketball, like any in prep sports, are in a unique spot, and they should enjoy it to the utmost, but they will soon discover that life won’t end at the buzzer—or even when the graduation gown is put in the closet. There will be other challenges and triumphs in the road. There will be a time when these high school kids are men and women and are defined by things other than points and wins.
And sometimes they will look back on their days through the half-empty glass on newsprint and they will see sections that seem bigger than they actually were and others that seem smaller than they really were and they might want to jump in off the sidelines to get back in the game.
The problem is that time spent on the sideline is as crucial as time spent on the court because life doesn’t listen to buzzers or refs.
So I am happy behind my lens because time is a shifty thing, and if I am not careful I will be looking back on now and thinking, "man that was sweet when I watched sports for a living."
I mean, I get paid to go to games—how cool is that?
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Like a half-empty glass set over newsprint it stretches things here and it condenses things there.
I spent much of last week watching high school basketball players sprint up and down the court and a part of me wondered if they really knew how lucky they are.
Here they are, focusing strictly on sports with their parents and community cheering them on and they have the luxury of dedicating hours to a game—how cool is that?
For most of them, there will never be another period in their lives that duplicates these moments. Soon enough there will be kids and bills, marriages and mortgages to worry about. As I sat there, separated by a 3 X5 view finder, I longed for my hay-day when I was pushing myself to be the best that I could.
I wanted to be off the sidelines and in the game.
I wondered what great things I could accomplish if I threw down my camera, and jumped into the game and demanded the rock on the low block. A delusional fantasy of myself sprinting up and down the court and gliding to the hoop crowded the space between my two ears.
Forget drafting Oden or Durant—draft me.
Never mind the fact that I would be dropping lungs instead of threes if I got back on the court; I still wanted to go back and squeeze every last drop out of my time in between the buzzers of every quarter.
I imagined myself to be great.
I imagined myself to be dedicated.
Suddenly it was a distinct reality that I was a sports legend in my high school days (far from it) and that I held records that crowded out the white on walls (actually I only have one).
Then I realized that I had stopped watching the games, I had stopped doing my job.
So I took a deep breath and wiped my hands off on my pants and got back to clicking a camera.
Time is a pretty funny thing. Add a little bit of it to anything and you can get something completely new.
Childhood? Sprinkle on a few years and suddenly it was either super hard (walking to school, up hills both ways) or it is ecstatically happy (oh, those were the days).
Mix time up with a sports reporter and suddenly you get a history of how amazing he was back in the day. Soaking up the moment is key to enjoying life but dang-it I just wanted the high school glory again for a second.
Kids playing basketball, like any in prep sports, are in a unique spot, and they should enjoy it to the utmost, but they will soon discover that life won’t end at the buzzer—or even when the graduation gown is put in the closet. There will be other challenges and triumphs in the road. There will be a time when these high school kids are men and women and are defined by things other than points and wins.
And sometimes they will look back on their days through the half-empty glass on newsprint and they will see sections that seem bigger than they actually were and others that seem smaller than they really were and they might want to jump in off the sidelines to get back in the game.
The problem is that time spent on the sideline is as crucial as time spent on the court because life doesn’t listen to buzzers or refs.
So I am happy behind my lens because time is a shifty thing, and if I am not careful I will be looking back on now and thinking, "man that was sweet when I watched sports for a living."
I mean, I get paid to go to games—how cool is that?
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
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