For better, for worse, our obsession with big-time sports has deep roots. We remember precisely where we were when our team won “the big one,” yet greeting card companies profit handsomely from their offerings of belated billets.
True Atlanta Braves fans know Mark Wohlers saved Game 6 of the 1995 World Series to clinch Atlanta’s only major professional championship. However, this past week Wohlers lost his Milton home to fire.
As he and wife Kimberly held their three children at a safe distance from the blaze, “we just looked at each other and said, ‘Everything that’s important got out safely.’”
Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Wohlers, for reminding us of two things. One, what truly matters does not come with price tag. Two, it seems we always need some sort of shot across our attention span to assimilate this lesson.
We are monopolized by the mundane. There is dry cleaning to be fetched, lunches to be made, dogs to walk, letters to mail, grass to cut, floors to mop, checks to deposit, calls to return — we get unquieted just making the list.
I’ll stop and smell the roses if someone will bring the little suckers to me, because that garden is across town and there’s no way I can get there and back before rush hour.
We are a mighty restless folk with only ourselves to blame.
We make it hard to sit in the early spring warmth with a good book. Not with so much yard work not done, so many gutters not cleaned. Down goes the book, replaced by a multifarious to-do list and we consign that quiet time to the bottom. Heaven forfend we give ourselves a quiet half-hour before grabbing the rake.
And then we are jerked back to what’s really important when we hear that single parent we know from church got laid off. Or a relative is waiting for test results to find out if she might have cancer. Or the family up the street lost their home to fire.
Many years ago I was angrily trying to navigate around some of my fellow Sandy Springsteens on Roswell Road with the kids in the back seat. After one abrupt lane change Amelia, then age 10, piped up: “Be careful. You have precious cargo back here.” Wise words.
This sort of thing does not have to be a constrained undertaking, pardon the expression. A friend told me her grandmother asks that dessert come out first when she goes to a restaurant. Why wait for the best part of the meal?
There is a middle space between living like there is no tomorrow and being too busy with the small stuff to smell the flowers. Perhaps, we gain entry when we gift ourselves with a moment long enough to take in a deep breath and just be.
It might also help to remember Mark Wohlers not as the pitcher on the mound when the Braves won the big one, but the husband and father who reminded us this week what’s really important.
Jim Osterman, author of the e-book “I Was Just Sayin,’” lives in Sandy Springs. Reach him at jimosterman@rocketmail.com
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