Add a Little Fiber to Your Diet


I don't know if I could stomach a lowtop but I like the look of this one. Shiny!

The Problem with Puppies


A gajillion years ago, it seems, I bought my oldest son his first pair of Air Jordans. I picked up my first pair of Air Jordan Xs at the same time (circa 1995) and when they started wearing thin, my brother, gave me a pair of the same shoe, same color, with the straps cut off the back. I still have them all, though the Toddler size 7s (pictured above) are being worn by a foot-high abominable snowman in my office.

Back in the day we decided to have my son put on my size 13 shoes and take shots on the short hoop out on the driveway of the rental we were living in. Then this past week I had him make the same moves on our hoop out in the woods by our house . . . to celebrate a brand new pair of Jordan Icons in Idaho Vandals colors (the Cougar Blues were not on sale). Anyway, I thought y’all would enjoy the comparison. Now he just needs to wear those out on a hardwood court so we can get another pair!

There is Only Now . . . and Now . . .

I am watching (again) what I consider to be one of the best television shows I’ve ever seen. Life. It only lasted a couple of seasons but it made an impression on me. A cop show but with a twist. Detective Crews goes away for a murder he didn’t commit, gets beat up a lot, reads a lot about zen, is exonerated, then goes back on the job . . . with an eye for the real killer and a taste for fresh fruit (you don’t see a lot of that in prison I hear). Some people don’t get this show because on the surface it looks like a gritty police drama. But its true message is in how the detective reacts to the world swirling around him in unpredictable ways.

Not a lot of people have heard of Scott Yost but he writes a column for a newspaper in North Carolina. And a few years back he told a story I continue to think back on. Here is an excerpt:

“A few years ago I was driving down some of the mountainiest mountains in North Carolina and I saw something that just blew me away. I mean, it floored me. A friend and I had been driving down these incredibly steep mountain roads—you know, the ones that are like straight down and wreak havoc on truck brakes. As you drive down this stretch of mountain road, if you have your windows open, you can often smell the truck brakes burning.

We had been down miles and miles of steep road, and that’s where I saw it. Off to the side of the road was one of those exits that goes straight into a huge sand pile. The DOT puts them at certain treacherous parts of mountain roads so that, when truck brakes burn out, those truck drivers don’t have to keep careening down the mountain to certain death—instead, they can exit the road, run into the mound of sand, and, with any luck, stay alive.

With this particular mound of sand that I saw, after miles and miles of steep downward road, someone had strung a little chain across the front of the exit and hung a “closed” sign on the middle of the chain.
As soon as I saw it, I started laughing, because it hit me: You might try, but you can’t really close those truck ramps. I mean, let’s say you’re a truck driver barreling down the mountain at like 150 miles an hour because you have no brakes left, and you’re doing everything you can just to keep your out-of-control loaded-down truck on the road, and you come around this corner on two wheels just looking for some way to stay alive. And you see this ramp off the road with a big pile of sand at the end put there for the specific purpose of keeping you alive in this very situation. But then you see a little chain across the ramp and the “closed” sign. So, of course, you would just say to yourself, “Dang, just my luck – closed! Oh well, maybe there’s another one a few miles down. I guess I’ll just keep careening down this mountain, picking up speed, no doubt to certain death.”

I very seriously doubt it.

Whoever put up that closed sign and that little chain committed an error I think a lot of us make all the time: he (not to be sexist, but I’ll bet it was a he) thought he was in control of something he really had no control of.”

Yost continues:

“In fact, I would venture to say that one of the principal mistakes we all make in life is pretending we have control over things we really have no control over at all.

Let me cut to the chase and give you a complete list of things you have control over. Here goes:

Yourself. You know—your actions and how you react to things.

Oh, and here’s a list of things you have no control over whatsoever: everyone and everything else in the world.”

Then he wraps it up with some excellent advice:

If you are facing a really big problem right now . . . Ask yourself what things about the situation you can control; then completely let go of everything else, and—and this is the important part—maniacally take control of all those things you actually do have control of. I promise you, you’ll be able to solve your problem almost every time.

What you will find in 99 percent of the cases is that you have so much extra energy and time and focus because you aren’t worrying about those things you can’t control that you will get through your crisis quite nicely, thank you very much, simply by putting your time and effort into those parts of the situation that you actually can control."

Have a great week. Let’s all find things we can take control of in positive ways. And bite into some fresh fruit to celebrate your freedom.