I have an old 1975 Ford F-100 that I love to drive. It needs a bath right now, and it can be persnickety, but it runs like a top. It's older than me and in some ways it's probably easier to get along with too. Hopefully we all improve with age. This week I got to drive it out to rural Virginia and back twice. Getting time on the road, windows down and music up in an old truck, is a pretty easy way for me to escape and find nostalgia and to reflect. Here's a bit of what this week, and those drives had me:
Thinking - This week scientists announced the new definition of a second. It doesn't really change how long a second is, but it does improve the accuracy of how a second is counted. Knowing what time it is, at least beyond the season, is a relatively new idea in human history. Measurement of time -- be it in days, hours, minutes, seconds, or nanoseconds -- allows us to do some pretty amazing things. We can coordinate school schedules, perform heart surgery, even calculate space travel. All of these are undoubtedly great abilities, and the micro-measurement of time will allow us to make amazing scientific advancements that improve our quality of life. The thing though, is that time can begin to take over our lives. And I'd argue that it's not all that important to our fundamental happiness. Heck, it may actually be counter to our happiness. When we are doing what we truly enjoy, time doesn't really factor in. Time actually evaporates in flow state. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that flow is the secret to happiness. It's very possible that our ancestors lived much happier, albeit less well, than we do because of their inability to track time and live in the flow. When we remove the pressure of being somewhere, or delivering something, or doing an action by a specific date and time, we can reduce stress. This isn't always possible, but it's become pretty natural for most of us to place artificial deadlines on just about everything. How much pressure could you release by removing some of that time constraint from your schedule? Could it be enough to redefine how you measure -- or at least use -- time?
Reading - Every year the National Football League puts on a huge spectacle. It's not the Super Bowl; it's the NFL Draft. And it's possible that there's more wagering going on among teams at the Draft than there is among fans around the Super Bowl. This annual event is where billions of dollars are wagered on which college football players will have the biggest impact on the NFL's 32 teams. It's fun to see who reaches for a surprise pick (which usually fails) but almost all of these selections are more hope and hype than help. History shows that teams grossly overvalue high picks and disproportionately devalue late round selections. Recently though we've seen a few teams buck this trend, trading away multiple first round picks for proven league veterans. The LA Rams did that last year, and ended up winning the Super Bowl with Matthew Stafford. This reminds me of the old parable about a pottery class:
There was once a teacher who decided to split his month long pottery class into two groups. Group A had to make a pot every day for 30 days (30 pots in total). Group B had to work on a single pot for the whole 30 days. At the end of the month, the teacher judged the quality of the pots. Without exception, every one of the top 10 pots came from Group A, the group that made one pot per day. None came from the group that focused on perfecting their single pot.
It's not a direct parallel, but it does show the lesson that the quality (or in the NFL's case, the certainty) is in the quantity. Raw talent is great, but it's not enough to place a massive wager on. Experience in the arena is what we should evaluate, and value the most. This is also why, as a Broncos fan, I was so pleased to see them trade for Russell Wilson instead of reaching for a QB in the first round this year.
Remembering - The 80s and 90s were a heyday for Country music. Many would argue that they were its pinnacle. From my view, it's certainly been pretty downhill since then. (Sorry, Luke Bryan.) Throughout these two decades there were many amazing women who raised the bar of music performance: Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker, Shania Twain, and more. This week we lost one of those icons in Naomi Judd. She and her daughter Wynona formed The Judds in 1983 and went on to release a string of chart toppers and take home a slew of music awards. If you're unfamiliar with their work, you can find them at #6 on this list of The Top 40 Female Country Singers of All Time. I'm also linking to their 1991 Farewell Concert below.
Weekly Gig - As just mentioned, this week's show is from 1991 in Murfreesboro, TN. Enjoy The Judds' Farewell Concert. Farewell, Naomi.
Happy a newly defined, appropriately valued, angelic week.
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