Brilliant skies and brisk air bespeak the season. It is the spectacular kind of Fall day when you want to be outside. Walking, bicycling, clearing your garden. The air is warm enough to invite you outdoors and cool enough to keep you there. 

A shout out to the Jets – who won yesterday’s game, yet again. As a Jets fan (this has been a lonely place people) we get excited when we can, which has not been too often in recent years. The number of penalties placed on both teams (but especially ours) was embarrassingly large. One wonders why and how professional athletes can get away with such sophomoric, stupid behavior. As the mother of 3 sons, who disliked everything football stood for most of my life, I am a relatively new convert. It was sheer curiosity about the intense engagement of my boys, that won me over. I suppose everything can have an educational component, if we allow the experience that opportunity. With my sons at the stadium, and me at home watching TV, we texted the triumphs and blunders of the game, back and forth, to one another.

The game ended late, and exhausted me. But the Jets won. And speaking of educational once again… Geno Smith, the rookie quarterback, has been a positive change for the team. The life lesson herein present is that sometimes, after serious thought and consideration has been given, when something isn’t working…something has to change. It could be the person, the procedures, the plays or the coach. But if it’s not working, spending time making it work, without altering the presentation and delivery, is a display in the art of futility. Like doing the same thing and expecting different results, which is the definition of insanity.

The other lesson is not to underestimate (or overestimate for that matter) yourself, your team or your position. Things change. E. J. Manuel, the quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, was having a lousy game but unexpectedly (at least to me) was able to even the score at 20-20. I still live with the underlying misconception that the way things go, is the way they will continue. This creative and erroneous thinking is possibly the polar opposite of staying open to circumstance as it arrives, because by assuming the past will be the future, I abdicate my power to an expectation. I believe this is freeing me to put my energies elsewhere – however, by so thinking, I afford myself the unfortunate opening to disengage. Obviously, it is (and was) my desire to remain present to life’s moments as I walk them, but this hasn’t always been the case. Perhaps part of remaining present is being honest with myself when I stand in my own way. And. Then. Move.  Because life is happening either way, so I might as well be in the game!