March Madnesss

Tenacity. Grit. Passion. Teamwork. Love for the game. Love for the team. Those words are heard from the commentators every year during the college basketball tournament. Even though neither one of my favorite teams are not in the Final Four, or in the final game tomorrow, I still enjoy watching the tournament. Young people show that they are passionate, have grit, and refuse to give up. It’s a metaphor for me of how I need to live life and how I can have hope in the future as there are young people who are already living out these qualities.  

Each team plays each game throughout the tournament as if it’s their last game to play. In our lives, very few people do life as if it is their last game to play. Imagine if you lived every day as if it was the most important day of your life. I know I live days differently. I know I choose whether or not I will engage completely into the day or waste time and only give it some of my best. The teams in the tournament who do the latter are the teams that go home early because they gave up and had unfulfilled potential.

Too many times in life we blame others for the bad events that occur. It’s like teams blaming the referees for one or two calls in the game. Once an event occurs that someone else causes, we have a choice to either press forward and go in a new direction and use different tactics, or we can sit, pout, and completely give up. Too many times we choose the latter. It’s time we choose the former.

It’s hard to get back up after someone else creates a diversion in our lives, but those most difficult moments in our lives create us to be who we are. When others try to break us, it is up to us how we respond. I want to be like those teams that come back from bad calls and huge deficits and win the whole game. Just like most people, this is one of my greatest struggles. It is work every day not to allow other people to determine my fate. Each day I have to determine if it is too difficult or will I learn from any event and pick myself up and move forward. People can push me down, but they cannot keep me down!

Maybe I’ll just have one shining moment that will make a difference for those around me. Whatever it is, I need to always live each day as if it is the only day I have and trust me, it’s difficult to do! I am going to choose to live life and see those one shining moments. Maybe only one team is left standing in the end, but it’s not about how I stand, but how I lift up others to stand with me. The team that stands in the end did it because of those that stand together. We are not alone. We cannot do life alone. We can stand and have our shining moments when we build our team around us to be able to stand with us. Whether we win or lose, when we stand together, we will have a shining moment. That one shining moment will create a shining moment for someone else. May we all have a life that presses forward no matter what and have our “One Shining Moment.”

No matter what happens in life, there are surprises. Let’s surprise people and stand in the end. When they ask us how did it all happen, we just simply state, because it’s called, “March Madness.”