Lessons in the Silence

Don't wait until next year!

  I am in New York.  It's the best of times and the worst of times ... the Yankees are celebrating and the Mets are on the verge of making history in blowing the biggest lead in baseball.  But I'm thinking about our Cubbies back in Chicago ... who are once again blowing their own lead.   Maybe they are just resting up for the playoffs and counting on the Milwaukee Brewers to just keep losing as well.  Probably not a good formula to count on someone else's failures to acheive your success!  Of course, that is not what the Cubs are doing ... they are just trying to keep things exciting to the end!  It is amazing how in playing 180+ games in a season how EVERY GAME counts!!  The same is true in our life ... EVERY DAY counts.  I hope the Cubbies can pull it off and make it to the playoffs, so we don't hear the same century-old Cubs motto again ... just wait until next year!  It would certainly be fun to see the Cubs in the playoffs ... and, except for the White Sox fans, it would give us something fun to think about until our Super Bowl Chicago Bears can regroup their offense!  What are you currently hitting the snooze on and putting of until next year ... that would be better to get going now?  Go Cubs!

Tanks ... but NO TANKS!

It is a sad day in Chicago.  Not because the Bears won't have Tank Johnson on the field to help defend their NFC Championship Title and a hopeful ride back to the Super Bowl.  But it's sad that we have yet another high-profile example of someone who didn't learn their lesson.  Tank hit the snooze one too many times.  If there is someone who had every alarm going off in his life, it was Tank Johnson.  As an awesome defensive tackle he has rung the bell of many opponents.  But this last year his "bell" had been ringing.  Lovie Smith and the Chicago Bears' organization did everything they could trying to wake Tank up.  The truth is that only Tank knows his real struggles.  It would be easy, as many will, to sit back and throw stones at Tank.  Maybe our time would be better spent in using Tank as our own wake-up call to ask ourselves where we are hitting the snooze.  Today, the Chicago Bears sounded an alarm that was anything but silent ... thanks, but no thanks.  Imagine if Tank had refused to snooze?  It's never too late for Tank or any of us to wake-up to something on which we have been snoozing.  Don't go back to sleep watching how this story ends ... if you do, you might miss the media frenzy of Paris Hilton's departure from jail.  But that's another story.  Talk about a cat with nine lives.  Don't think you will be so lucky.  Neither was Tank.  Wake-up ... and refuse to snooze!