Tag: school

99 – imperfection and greatness

Today is my 99th post on this website. Usually, people celebrate the whole numbers, so I am one off from a celebratory moment of writing post 100. Yet, I find the number 99 to be highly significant for a story I will share a little later on. But first…

Last night, I was playing around on Twitter and came across this tweet from a friend:

Aaron Judge, probably the most recognizable #99 in today’s sports fandom, is having a season for the ages. And while I am a Mets fan, with his own #99 –

it is clear that Judge is the better #99. Granted, for me, #99 takes me back to the great one Wayne Gretzky (NHL) and to the eccentrics like Wild Thing Mitch Williams and the infamous Turk Wendell (MLB – if you know, you know), but right now, for Baseball fans, 99 is Aaron Judge, and all the others tend to be glossed over (for a full list of all those in MLB who wore 99, see here).

This got me thinking about the significance of 99, only to recall another 99, but not in terms of sports. I was reminded of a teachable moment from when I was in High School, which I go back to every so often. It was 11th grade Chumash. We had just gotten a test back from our teacher and I noticed that while I got every question correct, I only received a 99 (yes, I admit, I was one of those students, always looking for the extra point). This bothered me as clearly I had earned the 100, the arbitrary perfect score we generally place on tests. I went to the rabbi and asked him why I didn’t get 100 when I clearly got all of the questions correct. To this day, I recall his response:

“Even Moses didn’t know everything, so in my opinion it would be impossible for anyone to achieve a 100.”

I’ll admit, the answer didn’t fully satisfy me. Yet, the lessons are quite apparent and in truth ones I have come to appreciate.

  1. As I wrote about months ago, there is a notion of When 80 Percent is Perfect. We should always strive for the best we can do and recognize that the best will never be 100 percent because the 100 is a long term impossibility. There will always be something that is missed, even when it appears as if you got everything right.
  2. We need to appreciate the beauty and greatness of the 99 within the scale of 100. Truth is, we need to appreciate even more than just the number closest to 100. We need to learn to appreciate all we have gained and not focus on the missing point(s).

Which brings me back to sports. Aaron Judge is having an outstanding season, a season for the ages, since we learn that in sports we focus on the accomplishments when it comes to most statistics as opposed to the failures that are the opposite side of the coin. For example, he has been on base over 40% of the time this year, which means he not been on base a little less than 60% of the time. In other words, his great year includes more failures than successes. Yet, we see the success and ignore the failures. He is having a 99 season (which for sports video game people, is the highest rank a player can get for a season).

If you have made it this far, thank you for reading this 99th post. Writing is a series of failures, deletions and edits until something comes together that is hopefully coherent and interesting. Life is the same. We fail, change course, shift, all in the drive to forge a path for ourselves. We experience many endings and New Beginnings. May each of you find the success within the imperfection and remember the greatness that is a 99.

Reflecting on how to appreciate the steps along the way: Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.

First Day of…

Today is the start of the school year for my two boys, as they enter 7th and 6th grade. It’s a very exciting day, full of hope and anticipation for a good year. It’s also a day full of nerves and worries about what will come during the year.

The notion of firsts has been a primary focus of mine lately, as you can tell from a few of my most recent posts. I have been trying to grapple with how we begin something and how we prepare to begin something new. Yet, another element of firsts is the calendrical milestone moments we encounter throughout the year. As I continue to reflect on and prepare for Rosh Hashanah (now only 25 days away), I find myself focused on how we mark the new start, the first day, the first step along a new aspect of our journeys.

Isn’t it interesting, that for new beginnings, we often take the smiling, before picture, highlighting the hope and excitement that comes from the starting new. And we all know that underlying the smiles is fear and nerves, yet we show our brave, happy faces to hide away the muck that is most often found inside us during these moments of the unknown. The before picture is like the on-ramp to this next journey. We are standing, carrying the tools we will need for this part of the path, trying to figure out how much of who we were and who we wish to be will help guide in this new section of our story.

And of course, if we are talking about the beginning, we cannot forget that there will be an end as well. What fascinates me is that we often forget to also take the “after” picture, either because the ending doesn’t happen or we merely don’t get as excited by the ending as the beginning. Or perhaps because we could say all “before” pictures are really the “after” pictures from the previous period of time, we never truly do miss out because in a grander sense each new leg of the journey is another beginning from a previous ending.

How do you capture your firsts? It doesn’t just have to be firsts like a new school year that we ritualize. Each of us should take the time to celebrate a new start, a new job, a new research project, taking the initial step into the new time frame we are about to enter. If we think about Rosh Hashanah, the anticipation and hope for a sweet new year, symbolized by dipping apple into honey and offering a wish for this action to manifest itself in our lives, is a beautiful example of setting a positive tone to whatever we hope to accomplish in the upcoming year.

Starting new things is difficult. Celebrate and embrace that you began something. By starting, you have already accomplished tremendous amounts.

Are you working on starting something new and finding ways to take that first step: Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.