Tag Archives: participants

Armchair

dictionary with letter A

Armchair: 1. (n) a comfortable chair, typically upholstered, with side supports for a person’s arms. 2. (adj) lacking or not involving practical or direct experience of a particular subject or activity.

There should never be more pundits than participants.

There. I have established a new rule.

Like most rules, it will be ignored in favor of some sort of haphazard pursuit of unbridled freedom.

Yet we have too many people with too many opinions who have too little talent to participate in the matters that are too important.

Last night as I watched the National Championship for college football, I was astounded at how many different people they had conglomerated to voice their opinions on the activities of these barely post-adolescent young men, who have been pushed to the forefront as superior athletes.

Some of these “armchair quarterbacks,” as we often call them, are actually former players. But they all seem to forget a very important fact. Even though I didn’t play football very long, I will tell you something which is never brought up by those in armchairs, be it about sports, politics or life in general:

It happens too fast.

If you expect your training or your brain to be able to come up with some magnificent way to handle the task in front of you, you will be confounded, stumble and make mistakes.

Just as a politician who wants to seek counsel with many people before making a decision always ends up piping in a little too late, any football player who believes he will have time in the middle of the game to access the resources of his brain and come up with the perfect solution for the situation, is going to end up looking foolish and inept.

Life really works with the conjoining of two magnificently unpredictable units: instinct and luck.

And the only way to be successful is to put yourself into enough uncomfortable situations that your instincts begin to turn you in the right direction, and then realize that the choices you make will still require some luck in order to be fruitful.

I got tickled after the game last night when they asked a player what he was thinking “right before he threw that pass.”

The young man crinkled his brow as if he didn’t understand the question, but politely replied, “Well, it was just a play and I played it through.”

Exactly.

America sometimes seems obsessed with the notion that we can educate ourselves into a better world.

Pundits love to discuss, from their armchairs of comfort, how somebody should have done something completely different in a given situation. But the best we can really do in life is to stop being afraid of difficulty.

For it grants us the instinct to know what to do at the right moment, and then step back…and pray we get lucky.

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Already

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Already: (adv.) before or by now or the time in question: e.g. Anna has suffered a great deal already

It’s a bratty word.

Oh, I’m sure you could convince me that the term can be uttered without exuding exasperation. But every time I hear the word “already,” somebody is complaining about being surprised, caught off guard or ill-prepared to make a transition.

Just think about the things that have been suggested in our country, with the response from the populace being, “Already?”

  • Black people should be treated like human beings. Already?
  • Women should be given the right to vote. Already?
  • Students should have a council in school to voice their opinions. Already?
  • Baseball should be integrated. Already?
  • Women should make the same amount of money as men in the marketplace. Already?
  • Gay people should have rights. Already
  • We should put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Already?

Remember this–bad people are bigots; good people are procrastinators. The only difference is a timetable. Bad people will continue to blow things up even when society has adopted the concept. Good people are reluctant to accept reform, drag their feet, and then later insist “they were behind it the whole time.”

Here’s what I’ve learned: by the time an idea is able to be aired, it probably should be considered. Whether I am comfortable with it or not will not change its importance.

“Already” is a way to slow things down so we can feel that we control everything around us,instead of accepting our role as participants in growing toward more understanding … even though we don’t always understand.