Gifts of Opportunity. Starring You.

Struggling with a hard decision at work?

Why do it? Honestly – why do the hard thing?

Maybe it’s not just for you. I mean, whatever the outcome, whatever the result, there’s grace in simply doing the hard thing.

On Saturday, we’re taking our son to his first movie at a movie theater. The Thompson Center’s inviting families with autistic children to come into a (more-or-less) safe zone on Saturday morning.

Do I want to go? A little yes. A little no. More often than not, outings like this end in frustration and sadness. There will be overstimulation and a lack of intuitive understanding about social norms.

Too, there’ll be other families. With other children. For reasons passing understanding, that’s always harder for me. Watching them. Feeling bad for them. It wrecks me for hours – even days. Weird.

But we do the thing. We do the thing. Because – in the end – it’s not about us. It’s about our son and giving him the chance to do his thing.

And when he does his thing … and it comes together … we all soar, man. We soar.

And, too, it’s about those other famililes that remind me in my dark uncertainty that we’re not alone, and too our friends who so desperately want a child. We go for them, too.

You do these things because you’ve been given these gifts of opportunity.

Work’s like that, too. You do the hard thing because you’ve been presented that hard thing – as a gift.

Can you possibly imagine how many would envy your position of staring the hard thing in the face?

Do it. Do the thing.

Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Don’t make excuses. (John Wooden’s father taught him that. Don Meyer taught me.)

Star in your own action adventure. We can’t wait to learn what happens next.