things i'm not

Sidelined at the soccer game, with my gimpy arm in its brace, watching our team get soundly defeated, I had forty minutes to think about what I'm not. For example, I'm not a really talented soccer player, and even with twenty years' more practice I wouldn't be good as some of the guys out there who are twenty (or thirty) years older than me now. Nobody is going to ever see me as the lynch pin of the team--the stable force who manages to keep them in the game. Nobody is ever going to recruit me to the team for my athletic prowess. I'll never have the beauty of movement, the soft touch, the graceful assist. And I'll never be recruited for my ability to cheer up the team, rally them for that last effort, make up some cheer-full cheer to make everybody smile.

It's odd: finally realizing what I am good at in this life also forces me to see all of the things that I'm not good at. Part of me is pretty okay with that realization, but another part of me wishes that I could be all of those other things, too.

Time is the most precious of resources, and I've wasted too much of it lately, with indecision and fear and laziness. But I think--hope, believe--that the time is coming to shake off the can'ts and won'ts and make sure that the dos are the best they can be.

I guess it's sorta like that genious songwriter Jalan Crossland once said: "I ain't great at anything, but if you are half-assed at enough things, and roll 'em all together, you can amount to more than one whole ass."