May 2023 – Seek The Substantial

Summer vibes in Baja.

I don’t know where I stumbled on this, but there’s this YouTube channel that cranks out good playlists, something for the background while I work, and it’s great. Leeplay.

If you are online, you are probably aware that Hank Green announced that he has curable lymphoma. Hank and John Green run a YouTube that’s wildly popular and they are also both successful authors. Hank’s announced that he has cancer has over 7 million views. What I wanted to focus on was John’s response about the response and other things. One of the “other things” was a prayer that I absolutely loved:

“I pray that we may be justified in our hope and unalone in our sorrows.”

That hits all of the right buttons no matter your religious affiliation and it is a prayer for anyone at any time. I have always loved the quote at the top of my header on Twitter from the Maori, which asks, what is the most important thing in the world? It is the people. It is the people. It is the people.

That’s pretty simplistic on my end and I need simple things in my life.

I’ve needed glasses for a really long time. I’ve eventually transitioned into needing glasses for near and far and I bought my first pair of transition glasses two years ago and I’ve pretty much hated them since I bought them. the transition aspect of them doesn’t work well, I’m always taking them off in order to read, which isn’t the point at all. All of my glasses have slipped off my nose, but that has nothing to do with having bifocals. I would be fine being glasses-guy, but it’s just never worked out for me. then about a year ago I noticed a brand that’s all sorts of bougie called Roka and they are made in Austin and they looked like they stayed on peoples’ faces because they have all of these good-looking people doing athletic things like swimming, bouldering, running, etc. So I looked at the price and decided that I would need to save up for some big boy glasses. I just got them yesterday and holy shiite they are fantastic. Just in one evening they exceeded expectations, the transition to read is unbelievable, I’m not taking off my glasses to read things and it’s just fantastic. Of course I missed out on their big sale, but that’s life. They are running a sale through the end of Memorial Day, but I also have two 20% coupons (I actually have three, but promised one to my lovely wife) that I’d be willing to mail to anyone that really wants a new pair of expensive, but very good glasses.

Hello.

I’ve been missing for a few months. Months that I’ve been busy on the weekends and basically not doing much of anything on the week nights other than drive kids to activities. And I’m not complaining about that. It is often those rides, even if they are for moments, that are the best part of the day. I get to steal the undivided attention of my child.

This LA Times article from Kevin Baxter had me in tears. It is the story of Dennis Kasumba who is an 18 year old orphan in Uganda and all he wants to do is play Major League Baseball. He shovels cow shit during the day so he and his grandmother have something to eat. Then he works out and plays baseball in between trying to survive. He’s trying to go viral on TikTok with his workouts where he jumps in a barrell with water, tapes water bottles to his legs and drags a tire, bench pressing and squatting a steel bar with concrete on each end and tires. You get the idea.

But then that’s not even the best and/or heartbreaking part. The best part is that Kasumba’s coach, Paul Wafula, asks that the boys he coach go to the home for disabled and disadvantaged orphans, the children who really have no chance of ever finding a home. The coach said about these disabled children, “These kids also want to be shown love, but they don’t have anyone.”

There are 2.5 million orphans in Uganda and the thought of helping an orphan seems insurmountable, but you should do something if you can.

What drives him are the kids. If he gives up, who will pull them out of the slaughterhouse?

“This is their only hope,” he said, gesturing toward the dusty field.

Still, he wonders, what’s the point of getting one barefoot orphan off the street if he’s only going to be replaced by another? What’s the point of encouraging Kasumba’s impossible dream if the odds are it will end in failure?

The point is that not doing anything would be even worse. Just as in baseball, it’s far better to try and lose than to not have played the game at all.

Not doing anything isn’t okay. This doesn’t just apply to orphans in Africa, this applies to everything, but if someone across the world is doing this with few to little resources then maybe we can do the same thing more often. Oh, and if you’ve read this and you know you aren’t going to read the article, the photos are terrific.

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What else have I been doing other than attending games and practices? Running a lot. I was supposed to run in a trail race in Arkansas, but the race was canceled because a tornado ran though the park back in April. So I’m going to run my own 50k on the Northeast Texas Trail, starting in Farmersville and just sort of running until I reach 50k. Sounds like a plan.