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Against the Giants earlier this season, Chipper Jones went 0 or 4 with four strikeouts. The look on his face after the last whiff was a distressed, “What the heck is happening to me?” look.
Jones used to terrorize the Giants. Someday he will be in the Hall of Fame. His career batting average is .310. He has hit over 400 home runs. Now, however, he’s 37, and injuries are keeping him from playing the way he used to. It wasn’t just the Giants pitchers that beat him. It was time.
Time is like water. Its effect is so incredibly gradual that, day to day or even year to year, it is nearly impossible to detect. It’s its relentlessness that gives it its devastating power.
Consider the Colorado River. Its water may seem soft and yielding, but give it 6 million years and it can carve a Wonder of the World into solid rock.
What’s happening to Jones is happening to us all. In our minds, we don’t feel old, right? Sitting still, doesn’t your body feel at least as good as it did when you were 16?
As long as I don’t look in the mirror, I feel pretty good, like time hasn’t whittled away at my physicality. Then something will startle me into becoming aware of - and reluctantly accepting – reality’s harshness.
I was crazy enough to think I could play in a charity basketball game. At our only practice, I made a couple of shots and, for about a nanosecond, thought I could still compete. Then I fed the post, cut to the basket, and tore up my calf.
While still wearing a protective boot on my left foot, my students caught a glimpse of a close-up photograph of my face. One of my senior boys made a remark that would have been funny if it hadn’t hurt, “Who is that guy? It looks like he ran into a fence.”
I hate my wrinkles.
When I was a brand new teacher, my principal had a poster in her office that I liked a lot. On it was a sage who looked about a thousand years old. Above him it said, “Seek great wisdom. See great teaching.” At the time, I wanted to meet that teacher. Now I want to be that teacher.
Isn’t it weird? Time erodes the body while fortifying the mind.
It’s no secret that, in this country, youth is revered and age is ridiculed. Somewhere else – Okinawa, for instance - despite the lines in my face and the regression of my athleticism, I’d be respected. Not for a youthful physique, but for an expanding intellect.
Is that possible here? Maybe, but certainly not until I learn to respect myself. Right now, like Chipper Jones, I’m struggling. When I look in the mirror, what I often see staring back is that same “What the heck is happening to me?” expression he had on that four-strikeout night.
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