SRA
It took me some number of my 70 years to truly internalize that “you miss all the shots you don’t take.” It is likely no coincidence that Wayne Gretzky holds more NHL records (61) than I do.
But I have been able to share with my students that “perfect is the enemy of good.” Especially when composing the dreaded, three-headed, fire-breathing Common Application essay.
“This is the most wretched, inane, brutally stupid 500 words ever composed in the history of college specifically and the written word in general since the invention of printed communication,” begins a high school senior. “No college will ever accept me, I am destined to live in a cardboard box under an expressway.”
“Perhaps. But the only 100% guarantee in admissions is that if you don’t apply, then you certainly won’t get in.” So let’s get started on another draft, keeping in mind ‘don’t get it right, just get it written.’”
***
Perhaps the following vignette—if nothing else an anecdote I like to recall—will emphasize the point. I am playing deep left field. Deep. One of my softball buddies hits a towering fly ball. My memory may not be perfect but I’m going to go on record as saying that 400 feet would not be an exaggeration. He got all of it. I took two steps back narrowing avoiding the parking lot, caught the ball and, in a motion that can only be described as fluid, threw a strike to my then ten-year-old son playing catcher who smoothly absorbed the ball on one hop and tagged the 200-pound runner barreling home from third before being knocked into the next county after completing two backwards somersaults and smashing into the backstop like a cartoon character.
What a play! What a glorious day to be playing ball with sunshine and three generations of Altshulers! And Lifetime friends! Nobody keeping score snacks between innings!
Twenty-five halcyon summers later and my buddy can no longer smash those incredible soaring balls arcing into the stratosphere. Which is just as well because I can’t throw all the way home from third base never mind deep left. We are all having bits and pieces of our once athletic selves snipped off or replaced. We are no longer nearly what we once purported to be.
Which is fine. Because the only thing worse than the indignities of aging is the inconvenience of not being around to walk your grandchildren home from school and read them Winnie the Pooh when they should be doing their homework and feeding them cookies and ruining their appetites for the healthy dinner their actual parents had in mind.
We rage against the current. We keep playing even as we are merely shadows of our once more functional selves. We acknowledge that you miss all the shots you don’t take especially if you don’t get on the field. Dance like no one is watching. Keep playing ball even if you can’t throw nearly as far as decades ago.
Speaking of grandchildren, it turns out that as of last week, I now have one. That ten-year-old mentioned a few paragraphs ago apparently dusted himself off after getting run over, survived 25 summers of family softball games, married the most wonderful woman on the planet, and welcomed Samuel (after her grandfather) Richard (after my dad) Altshuler to the world.
As can be imagined, we are all are over the moon.
I wanted to give Samuel Richard Altshuler some advice about “perfect being the enemy of good,” and how doing the best you can will inevitable be more than good enough, but there were a couple impediments not the least of which was that 1) he didn’t seem particularly interested in my pontificating and 2) that I couldn’t get close enough to the baby to tell him anything as he was swarmed by his parents and other grandparents all of whom apparently had their own agenda regarding feeding and sleeping.
But I was able to share with the assembled multitudes our understanding. We are grateful that Sammy has ten fingers and ten toes. We are thrilled that his six-pound, five-ounce body is completely perfect; we are ecstatic that despite our best efforts to constantly cuddle him, he does nap.
In short, he is beyond perfect just as he is—and will continue to be so.
We will continue to enjoy his company. Even if he goes to this college rather than that one. Even if he doesn’t make an extraordinary play at the plate. Even if he ends up missing many of the shots that he does take.
Ten fingers and ten toes. It’s like we won the lottery. It’s like we won the lottery every day for a year. We promise never to ask anything else.