My summer book club selection was “An Iowa Baseball Confederacy”* -- a story about a fantastical baseball game between a farm team and the Chicago Cubs in the summer of 1908. The game went on for thousands of innings and involved magic and … it’s hard to explain. At the end of the game though, all of the memories of the event and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy were erased. … hmm …
I was thinking about this the other day regarding this year and my desire to wipe it clean off the books.** But … life isn’t a TV show. Unfortunately, unlike a season in TV -- we can’t just write it off as a “whoops, I didn’t mean that”. It is what it is. 2020 is and always will be the year that wasn’t.
How do we take this fantastical year of seemingly nothing and give it substance and depth and squeeze all possible life lessons out of it? There is so much to learn and appreciate from the forced silence and modification of our behaviors (masks/social distancing) to protect the larger community. If we at Iowa Specialty Hospitals and Clinics go to our roots of community, compassion and caring … it’s not too hard to see that 2020 is a gift, not a curse, and should be appreciated for all its life lessons.
*W.P. Kinsella (also wrote “Shoeless Joe”, which became the movie “Field of Dreams”.)
**”Like the TV show “Newhart”, where at the end he wakes up in the bed from “The Bob Newhart Show” and figures out that it was all a dream and didn’t happen.
P.S. It’s only July and I can’t wait for January this year and I hate January. Patience. I’m reminded of a Lyle Lovett song “Church”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2OrBhVMKrk It’s about the congregation waiting for the preacher to finally end his long sermon because they were hungry and need to eat.
