How do you respond to success?
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READERS OF PAULMUSES.COM THANK YOU AGAIN FOR VISITING MY WORDPRESS PAGE. I’M NOW COPYING THE ARTICLES THAT I’VE WRITTEN FOR MEDIUM.COM. THIS STORY REFERS TO A MEDIUM PRACTICE OF GIVING SOME OF ITS ARTICLES A BOOST MEANING IT WIDEN’S THE STORY’S VISIBILITY. I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT.
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“We’ve selected your story to be boosted.”
What a pleasant surprise on an early morning in August.
My reaction went from gratitude to shock as the claps and comments poured in.
This story was still getting read 18 days later, the length of the most extended Space Shuttle mission.
And the Space Shuttles required two boosters.
The Full Frame boost was my first.
I know many of you get 4K claps & 84 comments routinely. But not me.
I felt like I did after my first Little League home run settled into my psyche. I was 12 in 1961, and it was a line drive shot over the left field wall. I can still feel the bat’s wood against the ball, sweet. And see the ball clear the snow fence in Duck Creek Park’s brand-new Diamond #2.
I had worked hard to become a good hitter, but success at something that mattered to me was new. I had just unwrapped a Christmas morning gift.
And began to play with my new toy.
How do you respond to success?
Have you ever seen the 1972 Robert Redford film The Candidate? Redford plays a long-shot Senate candidate who has just won the election and asks his campaign manager, “What do we do now?”
You can watch the short scene here. And the film on Amazon Prime. It’s a terrific political yarn that has aged well, but Redford’s dazed look and burdened question has stuck with me for fifty years.
Success, however we define it, is easy when it’s beyond our grasp. We can pour any sentiment we want into it. Yep, if only I get that, I will be happy.
My homerun happiness lasted one day.
The day after, a Saturday, I played pickup baseball with teammates on the McKinely school playground about a block from my house. A few fathers were watching from a house porch across the street. One came over and said about my homer, “That was a nice hit. The first is always the hardest. The second will be easier.”
All of a sudden, my new toy needed to be more. Puff the Magic Dragon was the same. But I was changing.
I hadn’t given a second dinger a thought until my friend’s father acknowledged me. I loved that feeling even more than I loved the feel of the bat against the ball.
Desire to please that man on the porch became a part of my world.
Puff was left behind.
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Sixty-two years later, it’s happening again. Last August, a Medium editor exited her comfortable porch chair, strolled to the playground, put her arm on my shoulder, and whispered in my ear.
“If you can do it once, you can do it again.”
Of course, the Full Frame editor who selected my story said no such thing. But that’s what I heard.
It has been repeated many times since I was 12.
The man on the porch became a part of me — a chorus in the play of my life.
The feeling in my hands when the sweet part of the bat hit the middle of the ball, the perfect swing, was replaced by something outside myself, who was let in through the front door and faded into the woodwork.
You, dear readers, and precious editors are now the culprits.
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Fortunately, I’m no longer a child. I’ve put away Puff and the tendency to try to please you instead of me.
Sometimes, I succeed.
Do I hear a cheer?
When I started this story, my first thought was not crafting a perfect sentence, the writer’s version of a homerun. It was directed at you. I wanted to please you. To get you to come off that porch and acknowledge me. To feel your admiration.
Of course, more often than not, you stay on the porch. And say nothing.
My desire goes unrequited.
But occasionally, I’m reminded of how good it feels on that rare occasion when you do cheer. That first Boost felt so good.
I’m tempted to take my eye off the ball, turn around, and look for the man on the porch in the crowd.
Or, at the keyboard this morning, to think not about the first sentence but an editor with a Boost gift in her pocket.
It’s all an illusion.
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I hit two more Little League home runs. And a bunch more in my mid-teens before the curveball ended my Major League ambition.
I loved the cheers and relished each moment when my teammates met me at home plate.
The man on the porch? I never saw him again but always pictured him in the crowd.
As my professional baseball ambition faded away, other desires took its place.
For each goal, I needed to please others. That’s the way of the world.
It can never be just about the ball or the keyboard, my swing, or my words.
There’s always a man on the porch.
But now I’m older than he is. I listen politely. Hold her judgment lightly.
And then step back into the batter’s box — focused on the ball.
And MY swing.
