Like Tossing a Rock

"Much will be required of everyone who has been given much.

And even more will be expected of the one who has been entrusted with more."

Luke 12:48

To whom much is given, much also is expected.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Much has been said along these lines..

how many respond to the call?

Every day, as I walk home from school, I bounce my life between my hands. I scoop up a rock from a neighbor's yard, the closer it is to a baseball in size and weight the better, and I begin to bounce it between my hands and perform a combination of reminiscence and self-assessment for the immediate and distant future alike. My mind shifts from hand to hand, what has come to pass and what presently remains ahead, all the while comparing and analyzing the present. These thoughts aren't quite as deep as they might sound, though.

Last year, it was several times "You will break a four-hundred pound deadlift by the end of this year."

Last max of the year, I put up four hundred and fifteen.

Not bad for a freshman.

This year, it has many times been "You did all you could today, head home, relax, and feel proud."

I hardly ever failed that one, that one was easy.

It was mostly in the winter though, when I got both my homework done and a maximal lift.

Lately, though, it's been getting grander. A little more ambitious, a little more exciting, a little more entitling, and a little more depressing. Today, I had just wrapped up a conversation about the growing possibility of me taking a year away from football. Honestly, with all the work that's been going down towards getting my diploma from Madison one year only, it hasn't been seriously until now that it became wholly real. I might not play football this autumn.. and it stings like a bitch. It could probably rip my heart out if only I'd let it.

That's all I thought about.. but as I watched the rock bounce between my hands, lightly sinking to that instantaneous moment during which all of the weight, the focus of my energies, impacts my paw, I realized that life was much the same in its way. We shift our focii, we enjoy our days, we take things one day at a time. The hand must perform two tasks before it shifts roles: the first, taking upon all the weight; the second, letting it all go. Football must be let go, academics must be caught. Higher priorities first, shifting focus obvious but necessary, hence, the flow of life.