An old man, a basketball coach, and a priest walk into a bar….

The great college basketball coach Jim Valvano, known for taking the North Carolina State men’s team to win the 1983 National Championship, then was diagnosed with all sorts of cancer, and turned a negative into a positive by doing public speaking, sharing his story titled ‘Never Give Up’, shared three things we need to do each day. This morning at church (yes, Catholic church, but don’t worry, I don’t push my beliefs on anyone. You do you and I wish you only the best), one of the best homilist I’ve ever known shared some great lessons that inspired me and made me think of Coach’s speech. I wish I had my laptop with me at the time because I’m afraid after a few hours, some of those gems I pulled out of my head have seemingly vanished. I hope to get them back as I type. Come on fingers, don’t let me down now! I will say in no means am I trying to change your beliefs, politics, or anything like that. I’m just asking maybe you take some of what I picked up on this morning and try to apply it to your life.

Our priest told a story of an old Palestinian man who every day would cross the battle lines guarded by Israeli soldiers. Each day, he showed up with food and supplies and would take them to an Israeli man and his wife. When asked by the soldiers what was he doing, he told them he was taking food and supplies to this couple. When questioned why them, he told them he had a son who was killed in the current war. The couple also had a son fighting for ‘the other side’. Both were killed in action. The man’s son, however, found out the couple’s son was in the group that killed his son. When asked why he was taking food and supplies to the parents of the man who killed his son, he simply said, “To make it stop.” He decided if he started treating others, regardless of religion, politics, where they live, etc…maybe that would be a start for people to start seeing eachother as humans instead of enemies, and all the insanity caused by war would finally stop.

He told another story about pickleball of all things. His first time playing was against a man in his eighties. As any ‘youngster’ might think, the belief that an eighty something year old man didn’t stand a chance against someone younger. Well, the first few serves were perfectly placed where our priest was unable to return them. The older man told him to step back as he was playing so close to the line, the serves were near impossible to return, so he stepped back. At that point, the older man started dropping in serves so short that our priest had to run up and try to return them. The old man then gave some advice; “You don’t have to be good all at once”. The point was that it took the older man time to learn how to hit the ball just right to have the kind of control he did. And tying that into our world today, maybe we can’t fix things all at once, but if we each try maybe we can make a difference down the line.

So how does all of this tie into the Jim Valvano bit? Coach said in order to have a really good day, or as he said, “one helluva day”, he said we needed to 1) laugh, 2) think, and 3) let your emotions be moved to tears.

1. Laugh: We all have rough days where things don’t go right. If you are into social media, it’s nothing but how bad each side is. We’re no longer a country that had individual or group differences, but were united as a country. Instead we are divided and there is no semblance of a unified country. Just my opinion, we’re going in a bad direction. But what if we could all figure out how to laugh? What if we quit taking every word that comes out of someone’s mouth or what they right in their feeds as something to argue or refute, and started laughing at those comments, and made it more of a point to get our news and updates from credible sources? Our priest shared another story this morning of a church who asked people to come in and asked them to pair up. Two people who ended up paired had completely different political views, came from different backgrounds, etc… They had fifty minutes to talk to eachother, but could not talk politics. After fifty minutes, these two actually developed a friendship, sharing similar stories and simply getting along. In fact, they decided to continue to meet monthly for coffee to talk, with the same rules – no politics. Guess what? In those discussions, they laughed. They didn’t call eachother Liberal or MAGA, far right or far left. They just talked about their lives and shared their collective stories. Image if we all gave that a try? Maybe we’d have less division? Less anger? Less unwarranted hate?

2. Think. Spend some time in thought. This was something I did a lot of this morning. Over the past few days, I’ve seen a lot of posts from people I respect, but have to admit, I was disappointed to read what they posted. Again, my opinion. It wasn’t that I was disappointed in them, I was disappointed because I felt like their entire response to another post was based on social media and not actual research. I know we all have opinions, and it’s easy in today’s world to form opinions based on who and what we follow in social media. What if we actually took the time to do our research before firing off at someone? Let’s face it, today it’s easy to ridicule and be critical of people who don’t think like you. What if we stepped away from our little box and tried to gain a little understanding of each other’s views? Imagine if those two gentlemen I mentioned earlier DID talk politics, but tried to explain WHY they believed as they did without looking for a rebuttal or opening to try to convert the other or convincing them they are wrong? Just take time to talk and process each other’s views. I bet we’d find a lot more common ground than not. Like I said before, I’ve been a long time catholic, but I don’t agree or follow everything that church says. Same for our world and our country. I don’t believe in boys playing girls sports, but that is such a small piece of the puzzle. I believe a woman should have a choice in what happens to her, but the subject has become so black and white, all or nothing. Maybe if we spend some time in thought, we can find that gray area, and we’d all be better off in my humble opinion.

3. Let your emotions be moved to tears. This one is harder than most simply because we’re raised to check emotion. We’ve been raised it’s a sign of weakness. But in my time, I’ve seen some of the toughest bastards shed a tear. A father as he walks his little girl down the aisle. At a touching scene in a movie where someone dies or something amazing happens. Those of you who are Marvel fans can’t tell me you didn’t shed a tear at Tony Stark’s funeral. Actually, I have come to believe welling up is a good thing. It shows you are human! My son is getting married in a month or so. I promise you my wife and I will tear up. She’s already promised that she’ll be a mess during the mother of the groom dance. My son says he’s trying to shut down the song after a minute or so. Personally, I believe it’s not because he wants to get on to the fun stuff, it’s because he knows she’ll cry and odds are it will make him tear up a little too. I could be wrong, but don’t think I am.

So back to the Palestinian man giving food and supplies to the Israeli family. He’s right. Maybe if we just stopped hating, blaming, and promoting division, we could all come to some sort of compromise. I know in our world there has to be a winner and there has to be a loser. But the great thing about that is I may win today, but I have to keep trying to win. And if I lose today, I use what I learned from that loss and turn it into a win tomorrow. I’m not a fan of a tie, but I also believe in some situations, there has to be compromise, and compromise with all those involved. So maybe we listen to Coach and my priest as they show us how to have one helluva day? I think we all deserve one now and again. And remember, we don’t have to do it all at once. Just a little bit at a time will take us a long way.