OPINION: Life is Pedestrian and Attainable

I remember as a young kid being fortunate to travel to some beautiful places. With gratitude for those experiences, I remember them also being remarkably (dare I say) normal. It might sound weird to say but looking at something like the Acropolis in Athens and wondering when the music from the heavens would play with angels descending in slow motion. Instead, there is a park with seemingly normal trash bins and your legs still feel sore from walking and the summer heat still makes your clothes sticky and uncomfortable as they would in any American city. 

There are trash bins at the seven wonders of the ancient world?!

A couple of days ago, I wrote a piece acknowledging the seemingly anticlimactic lack of an event when you achieve a transformation. Since it’s a process, you essentially never get a singular moment in time where you’ve “made it,” which leaves us quite apt to miss it. 

Life has a special ability to make almost any moment appear normal.

In high school, I was at a pre-draft workout held by the Tampa Bay Rays in Long Beach. While I was catching a live at-bat, I remember being so struck by the scouting director commenting on a seemingly regular hard-hit ground ball to right field. 

“Keep doing that, Jay..” the director offered. “You look like a Major League catcher. today”

A Major League catcher? Today? That’s what I want to be! This guy just stepped in the batter’s box one foot at a time and hit a regular-ass ground ball to right field. That’s what the Major Leagues looks like?

In fact, it is. Jason Jaso would make his Major League debut four years later at catcher for the Rays. 

What I think we all can make of these anecdotes is that it almost never pays to put people, places, experiences, and goals on a pedestal. Life is perfectly pedestrian and attainable. Furthermore, it makes it much easier if you assume it to be so.