Perspective ...

My volleyball team lost our doubleheader on Thursday night. Losing it was not nearly as upsetting as the manner in which we lost. We have done well at serve/receive all year, that means that we have done a good job of handling and returning the other team's serves. On Thursday we averaged 9 errors in serve /receive per game. That is really, really bad. Admittedly the other team had one girl who had a very good serve that came at us very hard. However, that only accounted for some of our errors and we have practiced against serves just as hard. Even with those errors we had 2 games (of the 4) that we should have won, the scores were 23-25 and 21-25. As a result of these errors I was not a real happy camper Thursday night and even into Friday morning.

Then I got a good dose of perspective. To give some background you need to understand that our youngest grandchild, a handsome, happy 6 month old boy, went into the hospital a couple of weeks ago. Their were questions of possible seizures. All of the tests came good okay and he was scheduled for a follow up visit with the Neurologist yesterday. My wife talked with our daughter and found out that the Dr. believes there is definite seizure activity (he had our daughter and son-in-law video tape some episodes of his actions). He mentioned some possible types of seizures that he is guessing are happening and wants another EEG done, this time a long one for an hour.

There it was, proper perspective, jumping up and hitting me harder than any serve possibly could. Suddenly the errors in receiving serves seemed rather minor and won-loss records were forgotten. It has reminded me that often we all get things turned around when it comes to true importance.

So what really matters to you? Is that where you are focusing? What really gets you upset? Are they things that have lasting impact in the most important areas?

I will certainly work with my volleyball team on improving our reception of serves, but I don't want to forget what really matters. I want to show my team that I have life in proper perspective. What do you want?