The Path of Thorns

I write this post in the wee hours of the morning on July 31st, 2009.  For most of us, it’s just another day.  Offices are doing end-of-the-month reporting, people are tearing another page off their calendars, specials are changing at your local restaurant, and Summer’s first half is long gone as the year’s 58.3% gone as well.

For Major League Baseball players, emotions are at some of their highest, as this is one of the most emotional-driven days of their season.  Like Spring Training and the playoffs, this is a pivotal point for many lives and many paths.  Between now and 4:00pm on the east coast, hello’s and goodbye’s will ring more than at any other point in the heart-wrenching, body-killing 162 game season.  Owners, presidents, general managers, scouting directors, agents, and most importantly, the players, will hear the clocks tick, the phones ring, and the stats thrown left and right on a player as if he’s a mere sheet of paper in a hungry pennant race.

A few chosen hotels are standing by, waiting for a call from a team telling them to book a suite for their next piece of their hopeful championship puzzle.  Or for the next select piece in their farm system, where those running up the hill, and over the hill, play for a dream.  Some players know they’ll be gone, some players get a rude awakening, for better or worse for them.  Wives and girlfriends (or boyfriends) are waiting to hear the fate of their husbands and lovers by the hour, by the minute, as Father Time’s finite period for this deadline draws nearer and nearer.  July 31, the non-waiver trading deadline for Major League Baseball.

Agents speak for them, general managers speak of them as pawns in their chess game, because this day is all about what the team needs.  Their needs and moves are life-changing, as the media and the fans chew on the fat of each news story, each twit, each tidbit of new information on a trade.  Whether a player wants to leave, or whether he dreads the notion and daily reminders from the public, dozens of uniformed soldiers report to new personnel in a mass quantity all week, and for 14 more hours.  The nervousness, the anticipation, the excitement, the frustration, all show each true color as they do their best to go about their daily lives.  Or try to, anyway.

To the vast majority of the fans, players are simply components that affect the representation and winning capabilities of their hometown teams.  If they under-produce, most don’t care if they’re dumped just like that.  If they’re expendable, who cares if they’re gone, so long as they fill in a hole in the roster?  Few of us stop to think what that means to the player.  How it determines the rest of his season, his career, and the life of his family is rarely fathomed.

I got a chance to talk about this topic with a former Major League Baseball player.  I did not get a chance to ask his permission to use his name, but I will say he was once a member I valued on my beloved Cubs, and someone who has gone through this very thing.

He mentioned a few things I did not think of – the idea that if you’re performing well and get dealt, you feel secure because there’s a better chance you’ll stay with that team, and find yourself a new home and a new exciting fan-base.  But if you get traded for under-producing, as I mentioned above, you stress more because of the new equation you’re brought into; that is to say, your new role with the team.  You may have been a beloved member of team A, but to team B, you sit on their bench and watch a team you may hardly know play without needing you as much.  I can’t imagine the loneliness, or the uneasiness.  Yes, ballplayers are millionaires these days, who will be financially stable anywhere once they hit this level, but they’re also human beings who may find job relocation following a business lunch or a thirty-second phone conversation.  And all a player can do is wait.

The player I interviewed made another mention – how their children have to say goodbye to their friends, how their wives are left behind to figure out their mandatory new living situation.  Some players who are traded still have several years left under their current contract, and may not see many warm days at their current home again.  New schools, new estate, new ways of life – including a new dreary apartment or shared house to those players still unproven.  Many wives have to say goodbye to the house they made their own with the player they wedded, to the friends they’ve grown attached to, to the happy life they had where they were.  As much as a player is a mere soldier in a battalion, trudging through a million-mile season, they have to be nomadic and well-prepared if they’re to make it through a long and hard career.

For every game that has to be won, a birthday is missed.  For every RBI scored, and anniversary is missed.  For every loss taken, a player’s lover says goodnight to an empty pillow.  These players, these soldiers, these pawns, have a job to do, a talent to use, a unilateral skill to answer to, and each of the thirty teams has a vast game of chess to play without getting a checkmate.  For each piece lost, one step forward needs to be taken.  Each piece on the board needs to be in a certain place in order to win.  Only the chess you and I play have tangible and unfeeling pieces…to thirty front offices right now, they change lifelines.  And business in this old game never feels colder, or more surreal, in the heated Summer than it does today.

New friends are made, old friends hug or shake hands, promises to keep in touch are made briefly, and a bus, or plane, awaits their fate.  The fate of the player, their wives and lovers, their children, their family, their friends.  Bags are hurriedly packed, goodbye kisses are known to be salty with the tears breaking between lips, retrospect is administered, and a fresh new start shows itself as a sharp right turn.  Whether a player is meant to stay with the team for three months or three years, depending on their contract, a new significant chapter must begin.  Even if they wanted to go, they leave a whole life behind them – and maybe a teammate, wife or lover that just doesn’t want to see them go.

While a team trades for a player, they really set the course of lives before them, and all of those they love.  And in a day where baseball is making more than it ever did, with more players than they’ve ever had, with a larger media than ever before, more and more of these lives are changed as more uniforms are created.  As I sit here writing this, I can guarantee a score of our hometown heroes, our team’s lifeblood, is watching the clock right now, wondering what their future holds.  And if they have the same anxiety disorder I do, I couldn’t try to put into words what they’re going through at this moment.

Players can still be dealt after today, but not in a condensed situation like this.  Not like any other point on the battlefield they encounter 162 times in six months.

So to every player right now on the wire, whether they know they’re on it or not, and to very wife and lover of these men, as well as their children, friends and family – there’s at least one fan out there who appreciates what you must be feeling right now, joyful or melancholy as it may be, and I thank you for going through it.  This is the last night of this deadline, so breathe, get up at the same time for practice, and either await Father Time’s pendulum, or completely ignore him.

13 hours left as of the end of this entry.  You can make it.  And whether we fans are watching you go, or watching you enter, we await your fate alongside you, with or without similar feelings.

And if you find yourself in a new city at the end of today, you’ll continue to do your best to make your own fate, and the July 31st trade deadline will be 365 days away once again.

Breathe.

I have no idea why I like the night as much as I do.  I’ve liked it ever since I was very young – I taught myself to read when I was barely older than a toddler, I do most of my real writing at night, and I do the vast amount of my thinking at night.  So that makes sense that I’d enjoy the night, right?  Well, yes and no.

Yes, for the reasons briefly stated above.  Plus, I love the still of the night, the peace and quiet, the tranquility.  I’m born to work late, as this is when I’m my clearest, but will give it up in order to be home with my Tara every night.  That decision I will leave for another post.  But I also love the aspect of night because no one’s judging you.  No one’s interested in the busyness in their lives, or the sharpness of it, for the most part, because many of our lives allow us to only do such things during the day.  Normal business hours.  Hours of operation.  Hours where our minds are bred to give and take parallel to the sun.  I’m the opposite; I get by during the day, and as plans go into the night, I wake up.  It’s like a constant second wind every day; if I stay up long enough, I’m extremely quick, at ease, and focused.  I suppose I join most of the writers of the world that way.  I think any writer who does his best work in the morning either writes light work, or is the wrong side of crazy.

I don’t like the night, because once in awhile, when completely left alone for several hours into the night, my mood changes drastically.  I get moody, or emotional, or vulnerable.  I even get a bit anti-social; if someone were to start engaging with me after I’m left alone in this situation – only once in awhile, mind you – I’d likely be rude and short with them.  In that sense I know if I ever did work late at night – which I would fight to do with everything I’ve got because I want to come home to my Tara – it would have to be a more social job.  If I were a security guard in a lonely office building, or a patrolman, or the like, I’d probably be a grouchy one.  Tonight was one of these nights – the grouchiness actually passed tonight – but it happened for a good few hours.  It’s the biggest negative on my company of the night, but I’m a very self-controlled guy who doesn’t let such moods in all that often.  Just sometimes they manage to slip by now and then.

When I get down and out on those few nights, I always figured it’s because I’m a social creature of habit.  Those who have me as a friend know I cherish and worship you.  Between them and Tara, they’ve filled the hole left my certain family of mine as well as any group ever could.  Yet I need a lot of alone time to keep myself happy and optimistic.  As someone who loves reading people, I get a lot of work out of myself.  But then, we all do; it’s not psychologically or sociologically unintelligent to make such hard work out of ourselves, it’s human nature.  A phenomenon of who we are as people; we’re all so self-centered and caught up in our own twists and turns, that we can hardly read ourselves most of the time.  But I’ll leave that to another post as well.

Few people even know about these once-in-awhile nights where my mood changes heavily – and unless you’ve had a late-night conversation with me where I get to be a pain in the ass, you never would – but this is another case of me opening myself up.  It’s always easier to be the second, third or fourth person to speak up – let me be the first to dissect my inner-psyche for you, and any quirks or habits I come across of myself.  This blog will certainly not be limited to that, but that’s the seed I have planted.

Because the night belongs not only to lovers, but to the erratic, the geniuses, and the writers who don’t know when else to write.

This is my first update since being unemployed.  Which is funny, in a way, because of the increased amount of time I’ve had.  Part of it had to do with my trip to Boston and New York, part of it an accidental lack of inspiration.  I wasn’t sure if this site was going to continue to be my breakdown of people’s emotions, or if it would be about an interest of mine – music, baseball, comedy – but I’m starting to get centered again.  This site was getting good hits in its first two entries, so I hope to reignite the little light that was beginning to emerge.

Since I’ve been unemployed, I’ve been getting in touch with a side of me I’m familiar with – and my biggest fear – insecurity.  I’m at an age where people are forming the rest of their lives, or the next chapter in it.  Chapters where they need help lifting off, or doing what they want to, even if that just means emotional or mental support.  Most people get that from their families.  Family is what everyone rightfully puts first – blood runs deeper than anything.  Family gets you through – in the end it’s correct to actually depend on one’s self only – but for most people I’ve come across in my lifetime, few have had to truly be that extreme and be solo.

I see parents who put their kids before anything they do, and would rather die than ever wrong them or endanger them, or hurt them.  Parents who can support you with their wallet, or their home, or their friends, or at the very least, with their hearts and good will.  Those people may not always realize how good they have it to have such supportive parents.

But when you don’t have that, it’s a hole that really never gets filled.  Some say friends are family instead, family you can pick – and I agree with that, as I have many remarkable supportive friends that I’m grateful for every day – but the bond of blood will always have its unique strength that can only be self-filled.  Money is never an issue for loving parents, if they can give it.  If they turn their back on you, or let you down, it hits harder than if anyone else would.  The bonds of friendship, the bonds of confidants, in the end, never truly fills the hole left by a parent who isn’t there for you.

As a result, you overcompensate – maybe appreciating or looking to your friends more than others – or you feel lonely quicker, or less secure.  A lot of times you don’t even feel the hole – not at your busy job, or on a fun night out, and you may not on a plain old bad day either.  But you’re always reminded of that hole when you tread a rockier road, when you need all the stability and support you can get.  When they’re not there, when they can’t help or don’t care to help…it’s never something you really get over.

My mother and sister are amazing people.  A few relatives I’ve drifted apart from incidentally are as well.  Everyone else…leaves me with that gaping hole.  I am that over-compensator.  I am that of someone who needs stability in an unstable, darker world. I miss the father I thought I had, that ended up destroying so much, without looking back.

I’ve been scared to talk about myself so openly, and I debated with myself for weeks as to whether I want to get personal or not.  But I decided to let go and say what I need to say.  I don’t force anyone to know me, or understand me.  But this door’s open for those who are interested.  My blog will be about my thoughts, my ideas, my views, and as it seems, my history too.  I have decided to let go and let you all in, fearlessly.  I’m slowly stripping my walls, and letting this blog reflect the stories inside.

I write from the heart – and to be a good writer, I need to let go.  So here I am.

Love.

Arguably the most common feeling, or thought, or reasoning, for almost everything in this world.  It’s one of the most open-ended words to define, and certainly one that’s just as misunderstood as it is carefully examined.  It’s a feeling all artists touch on, be it their falling in love, falling out of love, doing something for love, saying something for love, being bitter and rejecting love, dumbing down love, or claiming it doesn’t even exist and that it’s just a fancy way to say infatuation or lust.

I looked up a few definitions of love.  The first one was certainly interesting:

“any object of warm affection or devotion; “the theater was her first love”; “he has a passion for cock fighting”; ”

What’s interesting about that was, my first reaction was to laugh at that second example.  A passion…or love…for cock fighting?  Out of all the things you could love and have a passion for?  But that just goes to show how vast love can be taken or felt. 

A ‘first love’, as in the first example, seems to be used when someone first finds their niche, or what they enjoy doing more than anything they have previously.  It’s another interesting way of using the word because you consider love to be mutual, and with some sort of affection shown.  Yet one could counterpoint by arguing that a theater could love the person back, by existing and being there for her to find her talent and excitement within.  By being there as a place of refuge, a place of success.  That goes to show how far love really can go; by being there, you can create love, and hope, and serenity.

I found another interesting definition of love:

“…be enamored or in love with; “She loves her husband deeply” ”

Enamored is essentially the actual feeling of falling in love; the bonding that comes with it.  I will argue that this is most everyone’s utmost demand for love.  We find it, or attempt to find it, in any and all places; a coffee shop, a bar or club, online and through personals, through friends and family, at a party, and just throughout our daily lives. 

People looking for it too hard threaten the possibility of finding a false sense of it, or an incomplete love that leaves us feeling more lonely and/or alone than we did before it occurred.  The world is very tough, considered to be a lifelong fight and struggle to survive and find happiness in our mortality, and we all want someone to fight alongside us in battle.  It is for that reason that many people settle for and accept, and basically expect this lesser love.  As long as SOMEONE’s there, someone who we think knows us and understands us to a degree, most will accept the chronic issues and faults that come along with such a relationship.  It’s why many people bring back into their lives though that cheat, or lie, or steal, or hurt us in many other factions.  We bring them back out of familiarity; because we feel we may not deserve more, or our hearts and minds have become lethargic, but with the underlying reason that we need someone to help us  battle through life, and it may be easier to do so with imperfections than take our whole lives fighting it alone in hopes that perfect love will come along.  A perfect love no longer exists or is even deemed a possibility by many, and it really never was.  To err is to be human, so many unforgivable thoughts and actions are, in fact, forgiven.  And this lesser love continues.

My thought has been, and has matured over the past decade; do I REALLY want to spend the rest of my life with this person?  Would there be cracks in our relationship that would lead to a lesser love?  Can I wake up every morning, see this face, and know I have a good life because of this person?  Do I trust living with them in our home, telling them our deepest thoughts and ideals, and letting down every single teeny tiny wall we have?  Will that person never betray me, never hurt me, never insult the love we’ve created? 

Many have been duped after answering ‘yes’ to all of the above questions – another reason many accept lesser love, or the love of a place, or of our work, or of our friends & family only, with romance as secondary.  If one truly answers ‘yes’ to those questions, and are double-crossed, our hearts break.  That is to say, we feel the deepest hurt and betrayal in the darkest and most hidden part of our selves because of what all we let down for the person, and how much we had led them in.  If an associate hurts you, it’s nowhere near the pain of someone closest to us doing the same.  Humans can be unpredictable, and many question if they ever fully and thoroughly know the one we’re with.  Or the one we want to be with.

To have a non-human ‘first love’, like the previously mentioned theater, is safer for many.  It’s a place, it’s a lifestyle, it’s what you take it to be.  You always know where it is, you make it to be the relationship of your choice.  It’s always there.  If our first love is a self-made painting, it’s safe because it shows the colors of our choice, it’s love we created that exists as long as the painting is loved.  There’s no risk in a painting doing you wrong.

In the end, we all want to come home from the theater, or glance away from our painting, and look around us.  Many don’t mind going home every night alone, waking up alone, cooking alone, and planning their lives out alone.  Many others simply do so with friends and family.  Many have pets to fill something best filled with the love returned of another, whether we admit it or not.  At some point, all of these people who choose alternatives to a perfect love, by default or by choice, will ask themselves who notices.  Who cares what we do?  Who cares how we look?  Who cares what our dreams and thoughts are?  Why bother?

We bother because we all want, in some feeling in some crevice in our hearts and minds, or the pits of or stomachs, during a moment of weakness or self-pity or realization, that perfect love.  Knowing that someone or something can knock you down, and someone’s there to break your fall.  That someone that your heart knows will always be there for you, without doubt or question.  That two people can struggle through a single fight of life means a better chance at success, and a wonderful chance of happiness and safety.  And love.

In the end, our hearts and minds are there in existence to fulfill a promise.  No matter when, or how, or if ever it’s realized or noted, their goals are to fulfill that promise to another pair.  And fall into a perfect love.

I’ve spent the past few weeks deciding on a topic here.  There’s so much that flows through my mind, so many things I’m passionate about and curious about.  I’ve wanted to balance that to what my readers may enjoy and want to discuss or think about themselves.

In the end, your best bet in beginning your writing career is to only worry about what interests you, and let your mind form your ideas, arguments and compositions along the way.

I begin my blog with a thought I’ve had in my head for a long time.  It’s a very humanistic fault, or strength, or habit – the descriptive word can be among many.  It’s something everyone does – it’s something I do to a point – and it causes many results and effects as a reaction. 

That is, we all put on a mask, to a point.  We all mold ourselves to be accepted and open to a specific point; honest to a specific point; unyielding to relate and give particular information or giveaways about ourselves.  Humans aren’t really all that different; our intelligence, comprehensions and social interactions and reactions are a few of the vast differences humans can have with each other – a lot of our differences can be placed into those few categories. 

So why a mask?  Why don’t we all just accept that we’re the same race, out to persevere, gain a wanted amount of power and enhance our selfish (or unselfish for those we love) ways?  I knew I was right when I told myself to just put words down and go with the flow with this blog – this post can easily be broken down into several, and I may do just that.

For the sake of unilateral thought and conversation (I’ll remind you all I’m severely ADD!), I’ll stick to the more social side of this ‘mask’ we all have. 

Let’s say you’re at work.  Your co-worker is clearly going through something troubling – it could be financial, or work-related, or it could be a heartbreak or bad fight they had with someone.  Either way, you have no idea what it is, and it’s upsetting you as well.  For argument’s sake, we’ll say you’re not very personal with this co-worker.  This co-worker has the ‘mask’ on – one that allows them to still be professional and courteous at work, but you’re the careful observer and you see through the mask to the distress on their facial expressions.

Clearly, the awkward and generally unacceptable thing to do would be to take the co-worker aside for a moment and see what’s wrong, and if you can help.  Such a thing could even get the two of you in trouble at work, and your co-worker would likely be even more upset and uncomfortable.  Yet all you’re doing is try to help.  The common thing to do is to ignore it, even be wary of them, and allow the ‘mask’ to go accepted and to not dare speak of it.

We all want to be consoled in some sense during times like these.  We fight it, we have humanistic semi-artificial reactions like pride and false strength to attempt to keep the fight going, but we all want to be okay.  We all want to be heard.  We all want problems to go away however possible.  Yet we only want it from certain people; people who have known us a long time, or who may know the situation, or people who have helped us before.  Even if that person closer to you may have weaker or even incorrect advice on how to go about the problem, and this co-worker pulling you aside, for all you know, could be the Conficius in your daily life.  99.9% will never, ever open up to you, unless you’ve passed these unmarked doors to their inner selves and their hearts & minds.

The result, of course, is because we’ve all been hurt in the past, or double-crossed, or anxious to open ourselves up.  The ‘mask’ is easier – you isolate the issue to your own head, and you already know your enemies – or at least you think you do.  If you don’t take the ‘mask’ off, this co-worker can’t open you up and tear down your little wall somewhat.  Better off not risking it, you think to yourself.

I’m not advocating the troubled co-worker open up to their associate, nor keep it in.  But we all know this routine, this ‘mask’, that we feel limits the already-existing issue.  Despite the fact that we’re all so much more alike than we’d choose to admit.  Humans can hurt humans if information is given, and at least if we have the ‘mask’ on, the most we do is hurt ourselves.  Which is less severe.  Right?

Maybe.