Tonight I got home late and I was eating my dinner when my son Lincoln asked if I could come over and play a game with him. He likes to roll the dice and move his game piece, but when it was my turn he decided that I had to roll the color blue, or I wasn't playing the right way. I wanted to take an opportunity to teach him that when you play games there are rules that you have to follow so everyone can have fun. He listened and let me roll until I moved to where I needed to be and then he moved his piece to the end and said "I win!"
This might sound like something you heard in the news this week about a certain football game on Monday night. I just happened to be watching that game as my two favorite teams played each other in one of the best match ups I have seen in a many years. I won't talk about it too much more but I will say that, as the rules of the game became open to interpretation by those with the power to do so, many fans from both teams began to feel cheated in watching the game they came to enjoy.
Now I have my opinions and you have yours, but as I left in shock at the outcome of a game that was based more on the officiating, than on the professional skills of these highly trained players, I realized something about the life we live and the inevitable struggles we face.
First of all Life is not a game. Life is real and life is difficult in many ways, and we were never meant to just enjoy every minute of it like it was the latest technological device. When we try to make the enjoyment of life our highest priority, we find ourselves running the risk of allowing those things to dominate our well being. Then when we are faced with something as life altering as a cancer diagnosis we are torn from these objects of pleasure that we assumed were written in the rule book of life.
Bad things happen to good people. Many people have worked hard and sacrifice many pleasures to get to where they are, but just when they think they are walking down the streets of gold, they get thrown under the bus by the life that they thought was finally being written in stone. Cancer is that bus that runs 24 hours a day looking for the most expecting pedestrians, including children. There are often no warning signs and there are no authorities that can overturn the ruling of the aggressive nature of these diseases.
Failure is not an option. Blood, sweat and tears are not enough anymore and even when we pray we avoid failing like its jury duty or going to the dentist for a root canal. When we see our children's bodies fail because of pediatric cancers, we feel we have failed even though we had nothing to do with one of the most mysterious "bad calls" on a child's bodies.
Life is not fair. In a game when you roll the dice you know where you are going, but when life is rolling the dice and your number is up, you need to move along because there is no use in complaining. We miss to many opportunities to grow and learn because we want to rant and rave and make pointless arguments that just make things more difficult. If we search for the truth, we will find a way to manage our emotions even when hopelessness feels overwhelming.
There is one more thing about life I will share tonight. When the game clock runs out and the powers-that-be cannot be influenced any further, the true power to become a Life Champion is still within your reach.
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. Mae West.
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