The Junior Varsity Standout

(via kindereyes)

Make one meaningful, lasting relationship. Not easily done, but entirely possible.

Today, I saw somebody go through an entire conversation with their headphones in, music blaring. After the fifteenth repeated sentence, I realized something. More than almost any other invention in the last few years, the ipod has fundamentally changed the way that young people live their lives. 

Music has been a vital part of human expression for literally thousands of years, but until recently, it was something that only existed within its own sphere of being. With the advent of the radio, music became a natural part other events in your life. Studying, driving and even sleeping could be paired with sound, allowing for a fuller sensory experience. This was the advantage and objective of the radio.

The ipod, as the obvious conclusion to the evolution of music as an experience, blurs these boundaries slightly. It can certainly add noise to places in your life where there previously was silence, but more importantly, it can be used to drown out sounds you are attempting to avoid and to constantly occupy your senses in a world that is too often overwhelming.

This is a byproduct of what I would call the “divorce generation.”  As the divorce rate rises in contemporary America, somewhere along the line kids figured out that with ipods and similar sensory devices that they could put headphones in and avoid awkward and problematic situations with their fighting parents. By extension they have found that every moment can be filled completely. Boredom and excess sensory intake can be eliminated, this isolating the user from any sensory content that he or she does not prefer to consume.

Herein lies the problem - life is boring. Life is unpleasant. Avoiding these things does not eliminate them. There is a beauty in the sounds of blaring car horns and pounding feet as you walk to class, in the unintelligent conversations overheard on the bus or waiting in line, and to the sound of natural human conflict that one may wish to ultimately avoid. These are the moments that life is largely made out of. How do we expect our children to become normally functioning people if they think they can avoid every unpleasant situation and fill every void in their lives? Senses are meant to be the tool through which we analyze the world around us. Now artificial sensory constructs also occupy the space between such analyzations, sometimes even becoming a part of them in the process.

As time passes and the consequences of escapism permeate our culture, people will become more and more frustrated with the world surrounding them, due to the large volume of information that must be interpreted over the course of any given day. This results in things like higher stress and depression rates, and less ability to retain information and synthesize unique ideas, which are all problems that studies show American children have compared to to the rest of the world. Ipods give too much time to occupy one’s own head and not enough time to occupy one’s surroundings.

Dealing with boredom, stress and sadness is part of human development, and the ipod is able to interfere with this balance in states of mind. I try to recognize the beauty in life’s problems, and to experience everything going on around me without interrupting the flow of senses into interpretations. Conversation was not supposed to happen underneath the chorus of your favorite song, it was meant to happen on it’s own, or at the very least happen the other way around. It’s only a matter of time before we realize this, I think.

siphotos:

Brett Favre reacts after being selected by the Atlanta Falcons with the 33rd overall pick of the 1991 NFL Draft. Favre would be traded to the Packers a year later where he would become one of the league’s all-time top quarterbacks. Who from the 2012 Draft will be a future Hall of Famer? Time will tell. (AP)

(via grahammccullough)

This is the first April in 15 years that I’m not playing baseball, and it feels a little strange. 

Spring has become, over the course of my lifetime, inexorably tied to the crack of a bat and the smell of fresh cut grass, the taste of sunflower seeds and the soft thud of a baseball coming to rest in the pocket of a glove. When the trees begin to regain their leaves, my arm practically responds with the dull, throbbing pain of countless hours spent occupying the diamond where home is always located.

For me, baseball has always been there. Some of my first memories are of going to Carson Park to watch a game with my father and brother. Sometimes we were joined by our various cousins, uncles, or grandparents. While specific images may fade in memory, a general feeling of contentment pervades the scene, of a shared enthusiasm blossoming under the summer sun. 

If there is anyone to thank for this fondness of the game, it is certainly my family, my father in particular. Our house was perpetually littered with dog-eared sports magazines and ragged newspapers, left open to pictures of perfect swings and strange throwing motions, examples to be followed and problems to be solved. Dinner table conversation regularly turned to batting averages and ERAs, fielding percentages and box scores. My father educated us on the intricacies of the sport, instilled in his children a love for the traditions, the regality, the pace of the game. Brad Pitt’s character in Moneyball said: “It’s hard not to be romantic about the game of baseball.” Mr. Bachman would surely agree.

People, upon maturing, oftentimes have trouble relating to their parents, and this is a source for an increasing divide between them. While this was certainly true, my father and I always had baseball. It was a bond that was able to stretch across generations and affirm the ties that, while not always visible, are always present.

Throughout childhood, my favorite day of the week was always Thursday. On the front page of the local newspaper’s sports section there was more often than not a feature article about a local sports star, which was usually a high school baseball player during the spring and summer months. I looked up to them, and knew that someday I would join their ranks. These experiences also sent me on the path to Journalism school, albeit another story in itself lies therein.

As the oldest sibling, I have occupied a prominent role in the raising of my younger brother, oftentimes surpassing even my parents in sheer influence exercised over his behavior. From early on, I recognized the importance that the game of baseball played in my own life, and strove to give the brother that I loved the same experience that I cherished so much. 

More than that even, it has brought us together in times that animosity should have reigned. Words are often difficult between men, but on the baseball field we never had to use them. This unspoken bond grew with every game of catch and every round of batting practice. Between those two perpendicular lines, we taught each other about life, love and sacrifice, and always were able to acknowledge that the same blood ran through our veins, even when the words were slow in coming. We learned to rely upon each other for support during hard times, and for motivation during the good times. Brothers could compete, sometimes vehemently under these circumstances, and emerge as better men for it.

This, of course is not my last year on the diamond, far from it actually. The one thing that I’ve taken away from years playing America’s Pastime is the importance of the present moment. Focus on the next pitch, the next catch, the next base, and you will never be far from success. Lose yourself in the game, and you might just find something completely new in this increasingly familiar world.

I’ve been sitting here, typing and erasing paragraphs for a good two hours. Sometimes the words just don’t come. 

There was a train that ran through the center of the town where I grew up. Our house was on the outskirts, but we couldn’t escape the faint blare of that whistle late at night, or the warning bells dinging softly in the summer breeze. I found a sense of comfort in these familiar sounds. They signaled the world I knew, where the practicality of that railroad outweighed the flash of more modern transportation methods.

My friends and I would sit for hours on the hill overlooking town and watch the trains go by, wondering where they were bound. To us, the roar of the engine and the nearly imperceptible tremble of the earth when it passed represented the trajectories of our own lives. While some boxcars are left in the same yard simultaneously to gather or relinquish cargo, all of them are eventually bound for another destination. Some stay together as part of the same convoy, yet others are sent off alone, bound for an entirely different location. Each car picks up markings along its journey, some of them crude and regrettable, but most of them beautiful reminders of where they had been. 

To this day, when I hear that whistle approaching from a distance, I am reminded of the innocence of childhood in the slow current of midwest life, about how everything made sense on some basic, visceral level. I knew things would be okay as long as those trains barreled on by, that in the end all I had to do was follow the tracks.

There’s nothing worse than second guesses and missed opportunities. Did I do the right thing? I’ve found that usually, there is never a right decision in these cases. Either way, you’re left wondering. 

I’ve never dealt well with these situations. I live my life in conscious fear of missing opportunities. When I err, I try to never err on the side of caution. Most of the time, this works out for me. Some times though, it doesn’t. Foresight is never an exact art, and when you live life asking “why not” some bad decisions are bound to be made. For some odd reason, I can always deal a lot better with stupid things that I’ve done than smart things I should have done. 

It is, however, quite apparent that it’s impossible to see which way something will turn out at the moment one must make a decision. I wish I had some sort of insight to share with you about how to handle these things, but I don’t. The only thing I can say is that I plan on continuing to make stupid decisions in the hopes that I don’t miss out on anything important. It’s worked out alright for me so far. 

(via grahammccullough)