The Solution!

How I arrived at a Solution

Many years ago at the prodding of my wife, Corky, I managed my oldest son’s baseball team. They were a bunch of 7-8 year old “major leaguers in training.” Coincidentally, at the same time I became a supervisor at the Centers for Disease Control/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Never did I imagine that this ballpark would become my applied laboratory where I planned, observed, and evaluated my actions along with paying my civic rent.. I managed my oldest son and over time his younger brother’s baseball teams. Over the next 15 years I came to accept that the problems working with the little kids were not that different from working with the big kids downtown.

What happens to us when we become adults? We trade in our imagination and risk taking for body armor. We lose our connection with each other and, in turn, lose respect for each other and ourselves. We mistake excellence for mediocrity because we lost the lessons of childhood.

For over 15 years, I had the opportunity to teach children to play a game I love, baseball. The experience I observed from their cheers, tears, and fears reconnected me to my misplaced ideals and help me understand how to be successful with the big kids downtown.

Doing for others is the key to a quality work life.