The Big Game

     I met a man who grew up as the child of missionaries in Africa. This fellow lived and played with the natives and went to school with them.

    He recounted that the local kids loved soccer so much that they had an endless soccer game going. As soon as the sun was up each morning all the children in the village would run out to the makeshift soccer field and immerse themselves in their game. When it was time to go to school, they would take turns going into the classroom and studying their lessons. As soon as school was out for lunch or the afternoon they would dash back onto the field and play until they couldn't see the ball anymore. In that village soccer was the real deal and everything else fit around it. They had their priority, and they were true to it.

    One of my favorite aphorisms is:

The main thing is to keep

 the main thing the main thing.

   What is your main thing? Is it self-honoring?  Becoming a leader in your field? Enjoying your family?  Mastering your spiritual path?  Being in nature? Walking your talk?

    If inner peace is your main thing, author Hugh Prather likens the process of maintaining inner peace to holding an infant throughout a day. If you had a infant or were entrusted with one, you would give that child your first priority as you moved through your day. If you went into the city and you heard a loud horn honk, you would not drop the child. If someone insulted you, you would not put the baby aside to punch that person. If you saw a fantastically attractive man or woman, you would not abandon the infant to pursue the hottie.  The child would come first, and everything else second. When happiness is more important to you than all the other stuff that comes to you and at you, happiness is the prize you shall own. 

      Across the world from Africa, in an airport in America, I saw a man wearing a t-shirt that announced, "Baseball is life. All else is details."  Like this fellow, each of us chooses something that brings us life, and all else becomes detail.

      I encourage you to stay with what brings you life. Any path that makes you more alive is worth walking. I'm not suggesting you be irresponsible. You may have a job, family, and bills to take care of. I'm just encouraging you to be responsible to your joy. When you do things to feed your soul, you have so much more to offer your family and business. You bring your loved ones and clients a whole, bright, creative, wise, and loving person. So your best investment in yourself is your best investment in your loved ones.

      The African village's eternal soccer game is a great model for all of us to play more. In that village, the kids went to school and did their chores, but they filled all their free time with play. In our culture we work, work, and work, and then we fill our free time with work. Our wondrous labor and time-saving technology affords us more free time than any civilization in history, but if you can't stop working, you can't call any of your time free. We can call our time free only if we feel freer when we are done.

    Years ago I was visiting my goddaughter Shanera, who was about six years old at the time. Just before bedtime she asked me, "What are you going to do tomorrow, Alan?" I thought for a moment and answered, "When I wake up I will meditate."  "Then what?" she asked. "Then I will do my Course in Miracles lesson." "Then what?" she asked again. "Then I will do my yoga practice."  These were all my rituals I believed I needed to do to get my day off to a good start.

     I decided to turn the question on her. "And what will you do when you get up tomorrow?" I asked her.

     A bright smile grew over her face. "When I wake up I'm going to play. That's all I do. All day. Good night, Uncle Alan."

     With that, Shanera gave me a kiss on the cheek and headed off to bed, leaving me scratching my head. I had so many rituals I needed to do before I could play. She had none. She would have done well in the village's Big Game.

            Alan

The only prerequisite for peace is your willingness to receive it.

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Beatles' Song

Beamed to the North Star

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     On February 4, NASA transmitted the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" via its Deep Space Network toward Polaris, the North Star, 431 light years from earth.  The transmission, the first time a song has been beamed into deep space, marked the 40th anniversary of the day the band recorded the song.  The lyrics and music are now traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, to far reaches of the universe. In a message to the space agency, Sir Paul McCartney said: "Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul".
 

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