Value Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

If you want to gain a greater sense of things that drive me then watch that clip and you’ll gain just an inkling into how my mind works.

Unfortunately it won’t show you the goals my children scored this last season during their soccer games and even if it did it wouldn’t provide enough context to show you what I want you to see.

Because I’d want you to understand they were solid members of their teams but not the players you looked at to score the goals. Some of that is because most of their time was spent on defense and it is much harder to find the opportunity there.

We talk about opportunity often and they have heard me stress not being afraid to take the shot.

I am always proud of my kids but their goals stood out in my mind, daughter from the left of the net and then my son put two in off of corner kicks. They were rebound shots on all three of those scores and worth just as much any other.

Value Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

My son told me that after his second goal one of the players on the other team tried to minimize and devalue its importance and I laughed. I told him that value is in the eye of beholder and that I could make a case for it being worth more than the others.

If you take a clinical look at it each goal is worth one ‘unit’ so ‘technically’ there is no difference between any of them. However if you look at them in terms of what they do for or to a team they take on a different meaning and the weight of the moment changes.

That is because both beauty and value are in the ‘eye of the beholder.’

People assign and define these moments. We hold this power and it is up to us to figure out how we choose to use it. That is an important lesson that I often remind myself about.

Sift through the posts here and you’ll find lots of musings and memories about this and that. Some of those include my thoughts about how life has been more challenging than I would like it to be.

Some of those include my frustration about fighting battles that I didn’t start and being asked to work harder for less because of choices others made. It is not always glamorous and there is a reason why in one post I referred to life as a real motherfucker.

Sometimes I feel like Wile E. Coyote because just when I think I have caught that damn road runner I slam into a wall, fall off of a cliff or see the anvil coming straight for my head instead of my target, but that is ok.

How To Catch A Road Runner

The way to catch a ‘Road Runner’ is to do two basic things:

1. Never give up trying.
2. Learn from your mistakes and change things up a bit.

That is not particularly profound or insightful but it is ok because it works.

Success in life doesn’t always come from the glamor shot or being pretty. Most of the time it happens to the people who are willing to grind it out and who stay ready for the opportunities that present themselves.

Part of that happens by figuring out what works for us on an individual level. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than highly skilled, but most people can’t rely upon luck to see us through.

Instead we have to rely upon hard work because we can control how much effort we put in and how hard we work.

If we take a moment to pay look and listen we can adjust things so that anvil doesn’t smack us in the head and so that we don’t run into a wall.

What I Love About Rudy

The clip at the top of the post comes from a movie called Rudy. I am not going to tell you that I love it because the little guy made the big play because size isn’t what moves me here.

What I love best is heart, determination and effort.

Rudy finds a way to overcome challenges and to live his dream instead of dream his life. That is what gets me excited.

Grinding it out isn’t always the pretty way to do things but life isn’t about looking pretty, at least not to me.

Value is in the eye of the beholder.

• Saved: Children, Life