Everything I Know About Falling Apart

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An excerpt from one of the coming stories...getting there...I hope...

Everything I Know About Deconstructing

We begin our lives as blank slates.

Little by little, we learn.

We learn how to stand, how to walk and how to eventually run.

Moment by moment we start putting together a plan.

We try to improve every single day, hopefully, in all kinds of ways.

Our golf score gets better because we take a lesson or two.

Our relationships grow because we learn of understanding, and trust and commitment. We live our lives in a never-ending quest to learn, and that is if we are doing it right.

Yet there comes a moment when we tip to the other side.

The scales go out of balance and we start to go the other way.

There was a time when I wanted to become the greatest baseball player in the history of the world. As a little league player I figured out what it took to stand in the batter’s box and not be afraid. Soon enough I figured out that I could get a single to right field if I just went the way that the ball was pitched.

I started running faster, playing smarter, hitting the ball further and further. Other players started to recognize my strengths, and then opponents started to expose my weaknesses.

For a long, long, long time I thought about the fact that I was getting better. My expectations had changed, but along the way I had turned myself into a fairly good player, and then time tipped the scales.

I remember the moment well.

There were two on and two out in the last inning and I was playing the field, at second base. The pop-up was directly behind me. My mind shifted to the thought that the game was over. I had trained my legs to move. I had taught my eyes to judge the trajectory of the ball, and I raced towards the ball, just knowing that I’d made hundreds of such catches as I’d grown as a player.


But the ball was falling to the ground more quickly than my legs could get me there.

It landed in the grass in right field as I tumbled towards the ground, not believing that I just hadn’t made it. In the end, it didn’t matter much, it was just a recreation league game, and the beer was still cold in the bar after.

“Getting old,” a teammate said to me. “We’re no longer getting better. Now we’re getting worse.”

It seems to me that there is a tipping point in life as well.

We strive and strive and strive and strive, but eventually, it seems that it’s all we can do.

We’re slowly deconstructing, and the world that we live in eventually breaks down completely.

That is everything I know about getting worse.

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