“If you choose to feel like you’ve been harmed, you have been.”
-Marcus Aurelius
Every day when we wake up we have a choice as to how we are going to react to the world…
Undoubtedly, there will be several things that have the potential to upset us, but ultimately, it is up to us to decide whether or not we are actually going to be affected.
On a broad scale, we are constantly hit with devastating news around the world that can definitely take us back… Sure we would like to achieve world peace while ridding the planet of poverty, corruption, and the Coronavirus, but unfortunately, these tasks take far greater than one person to achieve.
Even if we had the ability to miraculously save the universe, would we getting upset over these issues to play into the solution to our problems…
I’ll answer for us:
FUCK NO.
When we get upset, we let our emotions take over and irrationally react to our feelings. These sorts of knee jerk reactions are what cause problems to escalate and eventually combust on a grand stage… Yet when we are able to rationally and objectively deal with whatever the universe presents us, we have the incredible ability to leap over all obstacles put in our way.
When I first heard of the growing youth inactivity movement, I was extremely emotional and cursed our entire public educational system… How dare they take PE away from our kids and all I cared about was figuring out who was responsible for this.
When I finally was able to take my emotions and feelings out of it, I was able to learn of the growing budget cuts and over-emphasis on school district test scores which had negatively impacted both PE & after school sports programs…
Instead of choosing to be harmed by actions I could not control, I decided to educate myself as to how and why this has become an issue and then logistically figured what I could personally do to help rectify the situation.
Yup, that’s how the Let Them Play Foundation was conceived…
Our goal was not to fight the bureaucracy of the public education system that has all sorts of issues, but rather we decided to take on the problem at the root by raising money then delivering grants directly to different youth activity organizations…
After almost 2 years & nearly $200,000 in grants given out, I feel like we have been able to make a far greater impact than we could have ever imagined.
Ultimately, the only way this was achieved was by collectively choosing NOT to be emotionally harmed by the issue which just so happened to be the exact thing that allowed us to be helpful.
-EB
P.S. This email is by no way a plea for your money, but if you would like to donate to Let Them Play, a good way to do so is by purchasing a copy of the Let Them Play: A Triathlon Across America hardcover, coffee-table book…
All proceeds go directly to the foundation for grants.
Learn more at LetThemPlayFoundation.org/Book