Giving...

Tell me if this sounds familiar. My desk is littered with ideas and plans, covered with potential programs and events, business ideas and development plans, strewn with contacts and lists and things to do. There too lies a pile replete with examples of failures, mistakes, moments best learned from rather than repeated. This pile takes center stage - they say we learn more from our defeats than our victories. Time seems to be passing so quickly now, as if once my eyes are shut it quickens its pace, willing itself to fly away before I have the chance to grasp it too tight. Isn't that one of our most common, most shared fears, that we do not have the time to accomplish all that we set out to achieve? How much more then does that feeling weigh down the wings of our dreams when coupled with the chains of our naysayers, those seeming ever-present doubters who whether through personal misfortune or misplaced ambition would rather see others fail than help those around them succeed? It i...

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Livingston may have been both blind and deaf to not recognize the endless work of the Elves of the North Pole, when the very night before Earth’s greatest KPIs are to be met, he cannot sense the hustle and bustle of history’s greatest working force. With an ever growing population of children whose stockings and trees and gift boxes must be filled, Santa’s Elves have never worked harder, or longer, or faster, or been less able the time to watch Days of Our Lives on television. They work around the clock, in repetitive, mind numbing, unchallenging tasks, which though for the greater good nevertheless give rise to increasing incidents of mental instability, from 1 elf in 1932, as evidenced in the Disney movie “Santa’s Workshop”, to several dozen, as shown in Will Ferrell’s “Elf”. These skilled workers under incredible pressure are offered no pay, only room and board...

I’ve put on a lot of jerseys in my life. From a young, naïve kid desperately trying to make a squad for which I wasn’t talented enough, to running up and down the same floorboards as my heroes, right through to pounding the cement with no shoes on just trying to keep up with others. There have been a lot of jerseys, a lot of different jerseys, in a lot of different places. Parquet, cement, blacktop, red dirt, grass, even brick. A lot of jerseys in a lot of different places with a lot of different people. Yet. Yet on that court, none of the differences matter. Not where you’re from. Not where you were born. Not what you believe in. You wear the same jersey as me, and we’re together in this struggle, we’re together in the same goal. Who you are, where you’re from, whether you’re male or female, black or white, this religion or that, none of that matters in the end, because above it all you are my teammate, and I can’t do this without you. I c...