"He that can have patience can have what he will." - Benjamin Franklin
Let’s
chalk about playing the long game, I did some math over the weekend. 2001 was
twenty-five years ago and 2051 is twenty-five years away.
The strange
thing is that 2001 feels like yesterday, while 2051 feels like it will never
get here. Hell, even 2031 seems like an eternity away, but 2021 was only a week
ago.
How can that be?
Time doesn't change its speed. Sixty seconds
is still a minute. Three hundred sixty-five days are still a year. Yet somehow
the years behind us seem to collapse while the years ahead stretch out like rush
hour on the Eisenhower.
I think time plays tricks on us. Our memory
compresses the past but stretches the future. The older I get, the more I
realize we don't remember life one ordinary Monday at a time. We remember it by
landmarks.
Graduating from school.
The first kiss.
The birth of a child.
The death of a parent.
Landing that job.
Losing that job.
Getting married.
Getting divorced.
Watching your son take his
first steps.
Watching your daughter
become too old to hold your hand.
Those are the mile markers. Everything
in between gets folded together until twenty-five years can fit inside what
feels like a handful of memories. The future doesn't have those landmarks yet. It
is just open space.
Our minds see
that empty horizon and imagine it is much farther away than it really is. The
past is measured in memories. The future is measured in anticipation. That is
why yesterday seems so close while tomorrow seems so far away.
If someone had told me back in 2001 that one
day I'd be sixty years old, chalking a little blog before sunrise every morning,
I would have thought they were talking about another old boy.
Yet here I am.
Which makes me wonder if
2051 will arrive the same way.
Another ordinary Monday at
a time.
Another baseball season.
Another birthday.
Another sunrise.
Another Chalkboard.
Before I know it, my last few weeks sometime
in the 2050s will probably be standing on my front porch asking where all the
years went.
I don't know what the long game brings. None
of us ever do.
Ben Franklin
was right. Patience has a funny way of rewarding those willing to play it.
So, I'm going to keep
showing up every morning, enjoy the landmarks as they come, and be patient
between now and the day I see my parents again. The long game has treated me
pretty well so far.
