It is easy to get enamored with shiny new things. Our new smart phone, tablet, or notebook computer. The digital frame on your desk that can be accessed by anyone you give your frame’s email address to so that they can add pictures that they think you will enjoy seeing.
Amazing stuff powered by amazing technology. Technology that appears easy to use but is very complex and technical behind the scenes. Technology that requires specialists and persons who have studied extensively in very technical areas.
Compare this to a simple baseball. I was never good at baseball. There is one that sits on my shelf by my desk. It reminds me often not only of the power of something simple but also how nuanced and different life can be when looking at the same object.
For pitchers, they look at a baseball and worry about how it spins, how fast or slow it is thrown, and where it ends up when leaving their hand.
For hitters, they look at a baseball and worry about where they might hit it, where there bat should be during their swing, and how hard they can drive it.
For fielders, they look at a baseball and wonder if they are standing in the best spot to catch it, where they will have to throw it, and what is the situation around them to help them decide what to do to it when the baseball is in their hands.
All three look at a baseball and wonder will a baseball make them famous or forever criticized?
A baseball is so important in a professional athlete’s life that there are managers, coaches, and athletic trainers to help them, manage them, and look for ways to get them to succeed.
A simple baseball brings crowds of thirty or forty thousand to one place to watch a baseball being used.
A simple baseball employs thousands of people who work at the stadium, provide us with food or drink, that televise a game, that describe it on radio, that provide the athletes with uniforms and equipment.
A simple baseball generates millions in ad revenue through signage, sponsorships and media advertising.
A simple baseball employs thousands who write about sports or provide us with sports radio.
By now you get the point. There is much power as well as nuance and differences in what we pay attention to with even something as simple as a baseball.
We lunge at and yearn for the attention and the excitement of everything a simple thing like a baseball is responsible for but fail miserably at taking the time to do the boring work to find that one simple thing, much like a baseball, in our lives that we can build off of successfully.