So yesterday I was finishing up decorating the Christmas tree, and all there was on PBS was either a fundraiser or a scrapbooking marathon (a perfectly okay hobby, I’m sure–but hours and hours of it?) and so I turned on the Seahawks/Steelers game to keep me company. (We don’t have cable, you see, so I’m limited to network TV and Netflix.) And then of course I had to watch the Broncos play New England, even though I expected it to be a total blowout. Which it wasn’t. But we won’t get into that here. Suffice it to say that my poor son’s ears are still ringing.
1. Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. Yes, just like Dwight D. Eisenhower said. The outcome of a football game in no way resembles in importance the outcome of a war, but the principle of how you get to the outcome is the same: You plan and prepare, but then you know that something will happen that you didn’t expect. Denver’s temperatures were in the teens and there was a fair snowfall going on during last night’s game. I’m sure the weather forecast was discussed, but until you’re actually out on the field, having to handle a wet, cold football, and your hands are freezing, and your feet are slipping, well, you just can’t know what it’s really like.
2. It’s too late to prepare once the game has started. Whatever you did or didn’t do, you can’t do anything about it now–you just have to go forward. I often get this feeling when a party or other social event I’ve planned gets going, and it’s happened before when a play or program I’ve directed starts. The people are pouring in the doors, or the curtain has gone up, or they’ve kicked off. The gears have engaged. The race has started. We’re off!
3. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This warning is usually used about stocks or mutual funds, but it’s true in general. The key word is “indicative,” which denotes an objective fact. It might be better to use the word “predictive,” but either way the meaning is clear: What you did yesterday, or in the last game, doesn’t actually mean you’ll do it today. You might. There are probabilities. Some coming events seem pretty much set: Will the new Star Wars film break all records? Will there be lines around the block the night before tickets go on sale? (Well, I guess they’re being sold online, so maybe those days are over.) You can’t say, “Oh, I carried out that good habit yesterday, or I stuck to my resolutions yesterday, or I had a 75% reception rate yesterday (is that even possible?), so I’ll automatically do it today, too.” That just ain’t the way it works.
4. You never get the same opportunity back. Even if they reset the game clock. Even if they change the ruling as the result of a challenge. That snippet of time can never be recovered. That sequence of events, that play, is over. You work and sweat, you get to the five-yard line, and then time runs out and you’ll never know what might have happened if you could have just had one more minute.
Well, my minutes are fast slipping away and MailChimp won’t have anything to send out if I don’t finish this. So I’ll stop for now. Do you ever have any deep thoughts as you watch football?