Tuesday, March 22, 2011

He's Got Game.

One hears people say; ‘I’m dragging my backside around,’ from time to time.  It’s an almost endearing, enigmatic expression which can mean anything from; ‘I’m waiting for a triple-bypass operation,’ to; ‘I drank too much prune juice last night.’  In my case, it simply means that I played too much basketball again.  And at this time, I mean it quite literally.  I am actually dragging my backside around.  
I would prefer that my backside keep up with the rest of my torso, but it insists on lagging behind, as it were.  I find myself talking to it while trying not to look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame walking down the street.  I cajole it.  ‘For Christmas sake,’ I mutter, red-faced, clenched-teeth, exasperated, ‘could you possibly go any slower (!?) You’re embarrassing me.’  You see, I have always been a sports star in my own mind and I’ve been trying to prove it, to anyone at all, for the past fifty years.   
This unfortunate state of affairs began with hockey. 
My parents enrolled me in an intramural hockey league at a local rink.  I would’ve preferred to remain in my room playing with my pet budgie, named Mr. Cohen, but my parents insisted.  That meant that I could either play hockey or endure a debilitating character assassination, probably several.  So, off I went.   
The coach was duty-bound to play all the kids, only I was really a terrible skater.  He tried to teach me.  He even went out and bought me ankle supports.  It was futile.  He tried me at every position until, one fateful evening, he placed me in goal.  The coach put all the pads on me; he even gently inserted the metal cup over my gentals, a kindness that made me feel mildly uncomfortable.  He threw the mask over my sorry head, tied the skates and pushed me out onto the ice with stick in hand.  And I immediately recognized the first signs of a urinary discomfiture.  It was a little early in life to conclude that God was against me.  Still, I really couldn’t believe my rotten luck.  I was mortified. 
Meanwhile, the puck was dropped.  I was a prisoner within the game, the goal, my pads and my body while a growing panic brought with it a sense of urgency.  From that first moment, I knew I was in trouble.  Within no time, a huge brute of a kid was bearing down on me, stick handling around the defense like a pro until he had a clear path to the goal.  I had a fleeting thought that he looked like some sort of mutant.  Wouldn’t that be illegal, I reasoned (?)  The kid had a breakaway and I was the only obstacle between him and his future.  He made one last nifty move to my left; he shot, I peed, he scored and I never played hockey again. 
Later on, I shifted my attention to football, then baseball, soccer, volleyball, even lacrosse, until I tried basketball.  I was pretty good at most sports, but I instantly fell in love with basketball.  I decided it was my ticket to soaring heights of success.  I practiced day and night. 
Anyway, I returned home one evening to find Mr. Cohen hanging upside-down on his perch, stiff as a board.  In order to allow a respectable period of time for the grieving process, I was late for school that next morning.  So my home-room teacher, a lady whose name, not coincidentally, was also ‘Cohen,’ asked me why I was late.  I told her that I had to bury Mr. Cohen.  There followed a long and rather uncomfortable silence until I finally pointed out that Mr. Cohen had been my pet budgie, recently deceased.  There followed another long and rather uncomfortable silence until she asked, with some apparent difficulty, why I had chosen that particular name for the bird.  I responded that the name had occurred to me, obviously, because of his large beak and that’s when I was sent to the proverbial principal’s office.  I assumed that being from the same ethnic background would afford me a certain artistic license, but apparently not.  
I was suspended from junior high-school for only a few days, but kicked off the basketball team as further punishment.  Later on, I smoked myself off the high-school team, drank myself off the university team, which brings me back to my current inability to walk like a normal human-being.  Be that as it may, once my backside catches up with the rest of me, I imagine I’ll be right back on the court, playing with anyone, anyone at all.  That’s just the way it is.    
The Tidal Wave.
In the meantime, I watched a great movie last night that I found inspiring and uplifting.  That’s what great movies do for us.  It was all about how the leaders of the developed countries of the world banded together, during a G8 summit, to actually eradicate extreme poverty in Africa.  At the end, once I was sitting back in my chair reflecting upon what I had just viewed, I could not help but acknowledge that it was, after all, just a movie.  It wasn’t real.    
Fortunately, my reasoning did not stop there.  I thought about how bold the makers of the movie had been.  The film-makers had done what they could do.  And, I realized, that should not be minimized.  Film-makers can donate money and time, of course, to charities of their choice.  But, as makers of films, that was what they could do for Africa, for the world.
As meditators, we are doing what we can do.  And that should certainly not be minimized, although it so often is.  There may always be poverty.  There will almost certainly be natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis.  There will always be birth and death.  But, there is a lot of scientific data now to prove the positive power of meditation upon ones environment.  Of course, I know I’m preaching to the choir, so to speak, when I say that we should, we must be great, to do what we can do.  All over the world today, there are pockets of souls sitting together in meditation, praying for peace, creating vibrations of oneness and harmony.  We are creating a better world, a tidal wave of unity consciousness washing away our tears. 

To an enlightened mind, this world is a movie, not real.  After it’s over, when an enlightened being sits back and reflects upon what he has just viewed, she cannot help but acknowledge that it was, after all, just a movie.  It wasn’t real.  We know, however, that every character in it was animated by one life, one light, pure, free and forever.  And we continue to meditate on that one love.  That’s what we can do.

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