Archives for April 2005

When I look at my life from a critical and impartial angle I find myself perplexed by contradictions. There are so many areas in which I feel like I have succeeded and so many where I feel like I have failed.

It is a paradox, success versus failure over and over again.

I am a big believer in failure serving as a tool for educating ourselves. If you never fail you are not human. It will happen some time, you just won’t get it done and it is in times of adversity that we learn who we really are. Failure helps to teach us how to cope with the challenges that life can throw at us.

It is a hard teacher and sometimes it can be exceptionally painful. As a father I am torn by it. I want to protect my children from disappointment, but I know that if I shield them too much I will only handicap them and make life more difficult. So there is a balance that I am constantly seeking.

When I was in my 20s a former girlfriend referred to me as being a whirlwind, living with me was like being exposed to the Tasmanian devil, the cartoon version that is. At the time I didn’t appreciate the comment. I wasn’t really angry, but I wasn’t pleased either.

My ego wanted to hear that I was the greatest man she had ever met. My ego wanted to be stroked and it still does. I like being the best at whatever I do. The silly and sad thing is that I am my own biggest enemy. Not in every area, there are many that I do well at, but in some I could be doing better.

The shortcomings are usually a result of my own laziness. A lack of attention or desire that falls short and allows me to accept less than I should from myself.

In my head I visualize everything that I do and I always make an effort to picture me as being successful at whatever it is I am doing. I think that I can spend too much time living in my head and not in the present of whatever it is I am doing. I am a dreamer and I have a very active imagination.

One of the reasons I love this blog is because it allows me to express myself in a way that I am not always capable of doing. I wish that I could plug people into my head, that I could show the film that plays there.

The blog is one of the most honest places you can find. That doesn’t mean that I am a dishonest person, I am not. Sometimes I am criticized for being too honest. But here in cyberspace I make an effort to point out the cobwebs, to shine the light into the little crevices that I keep buried.

I really don’t think that I am all that different from many bloggers. I want to be loved. I want people to consider reading my blog part of their daily routine. I don’t have a problem admitting that. But I also feel good in knowing that if that happens the readers are not getting a sanitized version of me. Here I am, warts and all.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the 20 year-old version of Jack was to meet the almost 36 year-old model. Would they like each other. Would the younger version approve of me now or be disappointed. Would I look at the 20 something I was and shake my head angrily or wistfully.

If they got into a fight who would win. The 20 year-old was a beast. I worked out for hours and was exceptionally strong. But the 36 year-old is tougher mentally, a grizzled veteran of many wars, cagey and wily. Would it be a draw because I knew exactly what was coming. Sorry, got caught in fantasy land again.

I told you that I can get lost in my head.

A friend of mine is interested in tracking down his first love. He recently got divorced and is curious to see if seeing her would spark any feelings. He believes her to be single and is wondering what would happen if they went out.

I think that he is trying to recreate the past and I am not sure that this is a realistic goal, but I understand his objective. Sometimes when we are lost we look to the past for simpler times, experiences that we had beckon to us through the hazy shade of memory.

Years ago when I was a newlywed I ran into my highschool girlfriend. It was kind of surreal, we were both married and hadn’t seen each other in quite some time. Without a thought we hugged each other hello and then exchanged a very simple kiss on the lips.

It wasn’t anything that lingered. We did it in front of our spouses so I felt no guilt about it. It was a spur of the moment thing, really kind of a reaction. But it made me think of a number of things.

1) I was surprised at the familiarity. I had kissed those lips a thousand times and suddenly after years apart I had done it again and it felt, well, familiar.

2) It was done in a very routine manner without much thought given to it. It occurred to me that relationships in which everything was done in a routine manner were not the kind I wanted to be in because to me it meant that there was something missing there, some spark, some little flame had been extinguished. And once that had been put out I wasn’t convinced that you could find a pilot light to restart it.

3) She and I were done. Even thought it was familiar and pleasant it was apparent to me that she was relegated to memory status and I was fine with that. Memory status was a good place, it meant that there was no torch carried.

More on this in another post.

I really enjoyed reading this article. It made me smile as I thought back to my childhood and remembered my dreams of becoming a professional baseball player. As a child I was a very good player. I played left or center field and had a very strong arm. I once threw a player out at the plate with a bullet throw from left field.

That same season I led our league in homeruns and extrabase hits. I was 12 years-old and convinced that no one could stop the inevitable march to the big leagues. It made me a little crazy that I could find few Jewish ballplayers to identify with, Koufax, Rosen and Greenberg had long since retired.

Life has a way of throwing curveballs at you and my career was cut short by a lack of money and time spent in Hebrew school. Anyway, here is a nice excerpt from the story.

“It`s impossible to know the precise number of Jewish players of that era since not a few of them operated incognito for fear of anti-Semitism. Ford Frick, who would go on to serve as commissioner of baseball, said in 1925 that “there must have been at least half a hundred Jews in the game but we`ll never know their real names. During the early days… Jewish boys had tough sledding in the majors and many of them changed their name.”

Those name changes could even catch other Jews unawares. In an indispensable essay on Jewish ballplayers that appeared in the 1997 edition of Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, David Spaner tells a story concerning Jimmie Reese, who would go on to a long career in the majors, mostly as a coach but also as a player for the Yankees from 1930 to 1932 (rooming for a spell with someone named Babe Ruth).

While playing in the minors, Reese once took part in a celebrity game in which the opposing team used a Jewish battery of pitcher-songwriter Harry uby and catcher Ike Danning (whose brother Harry starred for the New York Giants). Rather than use conventional hand signals, Danning called the game in Yiddish, certain that nobody on the other team would understand. Reese collected four hits, and after the game a surprised Ruby remarked to him, “I didn`t know you were that good a hitter, Jimmie.”

“You also didn`t know,” Reese responded, “that my name was Hymie Solomon.”

Brian’s post made me think about something that I haven’t considered for a while. And that is the question of how much to share with a significant other/spouse We all have stories about things that we have experienced in life. There are tales of school, of work, of play of dating, all sorts of stuff.

Collectively these are the experiences that have molded and shaped us into who we are today. But there are probably a good number of stories that you are not interested in sharing with others. The reasons vary. Sometimes it can be because you did something that you are ashamed of or embarrassed about.

It could be something that you experienced with someone else that you feel is too intimate to share, who knows. The reality is that there are many tales that are not told.

Yet I suspect that many if not most of us want to be involved in the kinds of relationships in which there are no secrets, the kind where you are comfortable sharing everything with your partner. But how many times do we really find that and isn’t that inability to share these stories part of why some people blog because here we can tell the tale.

Out here we can share the secret without the same fear and concern of being judged.

Back in the days in which I was single it was not unusual for my girlfriends to ask about the ladies of my past. There were questions about who they were, what they looked like and often more personal type questions.

I grew up in various Jewish organizations, camps and youth groups. One of the purposes was to try and see that we met other Jewish boys and girls. And it worked, but the community sometimes was small enough that everyone knew or know of each other.

So sometimes these conversations with the girlfriend could become uncomfortable. She would encourage full disclosure, asking pointed questions about Sheri Goldberg or Linda Leigh. How long did you see them for? What did you do and almost always was the question of “did you sleep with her.” Even when it was unspoken it was spoken, it was always out there.

And part of the problem and the challenge was that you ran into your exes on a regular basis. And if you answered all of the new girlfriend’s questions honestly you could find yourself in a very awkward position.

It didn’t take me long to determine that people asked questions that they really did not want to hear the answers to. It was similar to the “do these make my butt look big” or “does this dress make me look fat” line of thought. Minefields abounded and there was no good way to navigate them.

Part of the challenge was making sure your partner felt secure, but sometimes there wasn’t a whole lot that you could do to make that happen.

So I sit here years later and wonder if people really are still interested in hearing the full story. Do you want to know all about your partner, or do you prefer that they keep a few stories to themselves. And in regard to your own wishes, do you want to be able to discuss it all or would you rather have a few stories that are yours and yours alone.

Let me know, I am interested in hearing your thoughts.