Zimmerman Achieves Inner Conciousness

On Sunday former Oregon Duck Gary Zimmerman was inducted as the 247th member of The NFL Hall of Fame. He had to give a speech, and in it he quoted the Dalai Lama:

In 1980 I signed my letter of intent with the University of Oregon. I chose Oregon over other schools because it was the only college that would sign me as a middle linebacker. While dressing down for the first practice, I thought how strange it was that I was No. 75. After practice the coaches pulled me aside and explained that my future might be on the offensive line. The Dalai Lama once said that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. The point I'm trying to make here is that nobody starts out wanting to play the offensive line position; it's just where we end up.

You have to love a man who reaches a wonderful milestone and recalls his life with such humor and perspective, a football player who quotes the Dalai Lama. Big hitter, the Lama.

Throughout our lives we are assigned a number. A cubicle. A uniform. A name badge. A position. And we strap on our helmet and block as well as we can. There's not a hall of fame for customer service reps or nurses or mothers or small business owners, but we go in every day and do what we do. "Sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck."

I'm not the least bit ready to become a Buddhist. All that passive acceptance stuff would drive me nuts, but I have to agree with the Lama here. We want things to be easy and uncomplicated. We want our needs met and our path to glory to have no thorn bushes or twists and bends. Of course it doesn't work that way. It's the lessons, the stories and the obstacles that make the road interesting, that give the awards their meaning.

I feel incredibly blessed today, as light in heart as I have in a long time. Nothing has changed in the way of my circumstances, but I have the deep sense that I am in the right place and good things are ahead of me. I drove home with the top down under the warm August sun, and Duke Ellington's band was playing "Take the A Train" on KMHD, and I had the sense I already had my ticket. This weekend I could drive down to Eugene and watch the Ducks practice if I wanted, or this evening I could drive over to the dusty nondescript golf course I love and hack a few more balls into the wrong fairway, or go out for Chang's Mongolian. I love Chang's Mongolian. There's probably a restaurant like that in your neighborhood, where all the fresh healthy ingredients are laid out on a refrigerated table, you pick out what you want with some sesame oil and garlic and ginger and soy sauce, and an incredibly hardworking Mexican man stir fries it over a hot open griddle. Wonderful, simple food, maybe my favorite. I used to take both the kids there when they were growing up. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

I wish I had someone to go with me. It's weird, I consider myself a friendly person, but I don't have all that many friends. I'm not being self-pitying here, just reflective: what it is about my habits and choices that has led me to the place where there isn't anyone I could call and say, "hey, want to grab some Chang's?" There is Doug, who I love more deeply than a brother, but he is busy with his business and family. My own brothers are in California. I got to this place, I realize, because of the way I've chosen to live and divide my time, and many long years of squaring off in a heavyweight crouch of irritability or selfishness. I've squandered friendships, money and time, all my life. I didn't get what I want, not because of a stroke of luck, but because of the strokes of habit, living an independent, eccentric and largely unexamined life, much of the time. It isn't too late, certainly, but relationships matter. In the first pages of the Bible God observes, "It is not good for man to be alone." It's the fundamental truth of human experience.

Certainly there are times when it is very good to be alone. The practice of reflection, prayer, and recovery and growth demand that we spend some time that is quiet and personal. Socrates said, "the unexamined life is not worth living." That's absolutely true, but the over-examined life is paralyzing and a pain in the ass. We all have to take time to reflect, but then we ought to do something about it.

I will never be the life of the party or the center of a wide social circle. The same spirit that leads you to create a blog and aspire to write is necessarily solitary at its core. And I'm an eccentric guy. But I realize one of my goals in this transformation journey (and that's what we are all on, if we are honest) is to reach out and expand my world a little, to make a conscious effort to connect and deepen my connections to other people. Of course I have to choose wisely. There are two truths I am certain of: 1) we become what we think about and 2) we tend to become like the people we're around.

I used to have a really good friend I alienated over time with missteps and inconsiderate behavior, and several years ago we lost touch. Circumstances also played a part, marriages, divorces and jobs, and Parker's fatal flaw was a tendency to be judgemental. He had a deep need to be outraged at someone, a lot of held over anger against an alcoholic and distant father that spilled over into his conflicts with other people. I failed him and his anger at the people who had failed him before made the failure far worse. We came to some kind of crossroads and I never heard from him again. "Not getting what you want is sometimes a stroke of luck." Where is the luck in losing a friend? I suppose it lies in deepening your understanding of friendship, and being invited to discover all the changes you need to make to be more worthy of it.