Quote of the Day: “The reality is that changes are coming… They must come. You must share in bringing them.” John Hersey
Today, may just shape up to be the perfect day. For starters, the temperature is hovering right around 73 degrees. The sky is an aqua-blue color and the mountain on which I live is covered in green. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s ok when life is so wonderful. I got so into this mode of thinking that life is so scary, anything can go wrong, that I forgot that life can also go merrily, happily along. This morning, I met my friends at the park and we played tennis. The trouble with this group is that we have so much to share with each other, we often talk during the points. I hate it but I love it. You can’t believe how hard that is for women, to just play tennis when they want to share information too. After tennis, Sue O., Patti and I headed up Millcreek Canyon on our bikes. With Patti speeding in front of us, Sue and I stopped several times to get some liquid and admire the canyon. There are a whole lot of Monarch Butterflies gracing the canyon road right now. Some of them are huge, flying around enjoying their new found freedom, after the cocoon, of course. Hey, that’s a lot like me last year. I retreated from so many things I had been doing to heal. I understand that everyone handles adversity, illness, and death differently but my way was to simplify my life and spend time doing some new activities like blogging and certainly walking and hiking each day, which involved connecting with friends and sisters. I am immensely grateful for that time because it taught me a lot about the generosity of others and also much about myself. In typical supportive Sue fashion, when we reached the gate, she declared that my cancer was gone!
Having gone through an illness changes a person, as well it should but it’s easy to fall back to those petty, selfish ways. I’ve written about women and tennis before in my blog, but it’s an interesting culture that I still am exploring and definitely struggling to understand. Sue O. and I had a match in Park City last Thursday and the women started, literally from the first point, breaking the rules of tennis etiquette. Now, I really like people to be honest and I like them to be fair. When I play a game, I’m a rule keeper. But as the match progressed, they continued to talk before each point making Sue and I wait as they got ready. During one point, they discussed whether our ball was in or out, then they announced it was, of course, out and took the point. Anyway, we couldn’t figure out if they were playing mind games or didn’t know tennis etiquette or just trying to bug us or were just plain rude. I still don’t know but here’s what I learned. I suggested that Sue and I take our time in between points, talk until they were ready to start the point. We did that for a bit but then Sue said “I’m not going to do that anymore.” We decided not to change our behavior because their behavior was discourteous and there in lies the lesson. We should never change our behavior because of another’s bad behavior.
Alex brought up this same point the other day asking “Is it ok to run negative political ads, even though you committed to not running negative ads, if your opponent is running them?” Something to think about, I guess.
Anyway, it’s made me realize how much I want to keep my behavior consistent with my values no matter what another person does. I love that Sue had the guts to stop our behavior. We lost the match but learned a valuable lesson!
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