Everyone Makes Mistakes

You’re lying if you say you’ve never made a mistake in your life. Everyone does. Some mistakes in life are minor and can be easily forgiven, but there are also major mistakes that can change not only that person’s life but also the people around them. These mistakes can ruin lives and things may end up never being the same. But does one mistake ruin someone’s life?

One mistake doesn’t ruin someone’s life; it is usually a combination of minor mistakes leading up to a major mistakes. You only get so many chances and free passes in life. I think of the saying “count your blessings” because I heard it used a lot growing up. When I think of that saying it reminds me that I am blessed to have all the things that I have and that my parents worked hard to provide the best life possible for me. Then I think about the fact that one major mistake could have changed everything. I am lucky to have the life that I have, but others aren’t as lucky. Parents make mistakes and that affects their children more than it affects them. If these mistakes continue to add up, the children can be affected drastically and it could affect them for their entire lives.

Think of how lucky you are to not be in the public eye when you make mistakes. Professional sports players, actors and singers are constantly in the public eye and any mistake they make can affect their fan-base and sometimes even affect their whole career. Think of NFL quarterback Michael Vick and the dog fighting scandal. He was put in jail and lost a huge chunk out of his fan base, but eventually he returned to football. Vick isn’t all bad, he just made a mistake and had bad judgment. That one mistake shouldn’t ruin a career, and it didn’t in Vick’s case but it definitely affected it a lot. Still to this day people despise Michael Vick for what he did in his past, but that is the nature of humans I guess.

Speaking of the nature of humans brings me back to the fact that everyone makes mistakes. Every single human being makes mistakes no matter who they are. Mistakes are a part of life. They teach us lessons and make us the people that we are. Mistakes lead to building character and lead to life lessons that we can pass on to our children.

Mistakes are necessary and they’re normal. When someone makes a mistake, don’t be so quick to forgive. Make them earn their forgiveness. That is the only way that they will truly learn the whole lesson from their mistake. At the same time, forgiveness is important in life too. If you don’t forgive you’re can’t move on. You’re always stuck on the fact that “so in so did this” and you miss out on the amazing person that you aren’t forgiving. Forgive when you’re ready to forgive, but work towards forgiving because it is important to living a full life.

Think about it, if you never forgave people for their mistakes where would you be in life? Say your significant other lied to you and you never forgave them. How could that relationship progress if you don’t forgive them? The answer to that is it can’t. Sure it may take a little while to build your trust back up, but you have to forgive if you really want your relationship to move forward.

That being said, I know I’m being repetitive but I have to say again that every human makes mistakes. No one in this world is perfect and we weren’t made to be perfect. Making mistakes is part of life. I will leave you with this last thought; it isn’t the mistakes that you make that matter, it is how you learn from those mistakes.

-Eric Proulx

Day and Night

I was walking home from my late class one night and I started thinking about my “beauty of nature” blog last week. Not only did I begin to think about the beauty of nature that night, but also the pure beauty of the idea of day and night. It amazed me that in that moment something so completely simple was so beautiful. It truly is the little things in life that people don’t usually notice that are the most beautiful things.

Day is bright and night is dark. The day has the sun and the night has the moon. Night isn’t usually experienced as much as day because we sleep at night. You hear people say they’re scared of the dark of night, but why? You don’t see many people afraid of the daylight, unless you watch The Benchwarmers (only some of you will understand that reference). The bottom line is, day and night are completely opposite, yet they are very similar. That may not make sense yet, but eventually it will.

I stood there in the night thinking about how similar night and day actually are. Generally when you have a nice day with a blue sky that leads to a nice night with a lot of stars. And to me I see both of those things as beautiful. It amazes me that something that simple can actually be beautiful. When you think about it, what happens during the day directly relates to what will happen at night. By that I mean if it isn’t a nice day out, the night likely isn’t going to be nice. If it rains during the day it is either also raining at night or there aren’t stars because of the overcast. It’s so simple to the naked eye, but it seems so complex to me when I really dive into it and think about it. But although they’re beautiful together, they’re even more beautiful when you think about them separately.

Naturally I’m going to start with day. The sun itself just brings a sort of liveliness to days. When I go outside and don’t see the sun I usually feel lazy. The rain definitely isn’t something that anyone loves all the time, but I love looking out the window and watching the rain fall to the ground. Sometimes I even like going out and running around in the rain if it’s during the spring or summer. Everyone will probably witness a rainbow at some point in their lives, and it’s really weird if you think about it. Combine the rain that everyone dreads and the bright sun that cheers us up and get something amazing. A rainbow is simple and complex at the same time, but it is definitely a beauty of the daytime.

Then there’s night. It’s dark and may seem boring. But think about the things you see in the night. The stars come out at night, and the stars shine so bright and beautiful. I love just laying outside with my girlfriend and looking up at the stars. It relaxes me so much. The moon and the stars are so far away from us, but they can be appreciated anyway. When I see a bright moon it always catches my eyes and I end up getting lost looking at it. The sounds of the darkness may be scary sometimes because you have absolutely no idea what is around you, but the sights are beautiful.

Day and night are complete opposites, but they’re both beautiful in their own special ways. I hope that this makes you want to look outside or go stand outside and just appreciate what’s around you. Appreciate the beauty of our world and specifically the beauty of the simple things like day and night. There is so much beauty around us that we are oblivious to. So open your eyes, there’s beauty right in front of you.

-Eric Proulx

Are pro sports players too greedy?

Over the years it is quite evident that money is playing an increasingly important role in the world of professional athletics. And that is understandable because money is becoming more important to everyone. But are these players getting greedy? Are they forgetting that they play a sport for a living and that their job is supposed to be more about fun than the money? I don’t know if true love for the game is being lost or if they just are keeping it on the back burner, but it seems to me that money is taking over and it isn’t good.

The economy is without a doubt absolutely terrible right now, but you would never know from professional sports. It seems that front offices are having no problem spending millions and millions of dollars to pay someone to play a sport without any worry about that money. I guess you can say the same for the majority of the upper class, but they aren’t in the spotlight for it all the time. We see sports franchises spending more and more money all the time and I’m beginning to wonder when enough is enough.

The odd thing is that players still want more money. They aren’t content with the $10 million a year salary and they look elsewhere for more. Look to Major League Baseball for example. The New York Yankees spend countless amounts of money a year on players and somehow always seem to make it to the playoffs, whereas teams like the Oakland Athletics rarely ever make the playoffs because their salary cap is much lower. If money didn’t matter the most, teams with low salary caps would still be able to compete with “rich” franchises.

Sports players are getting greedy, but the franchises are enabling them to become greedy. The front offices aren’t stopping the players from making the money they want, and they probably won’t any time soon. You see pro sports having lockouts, and most of the time these lockouts are about money. It’s amazing how people that are making so much money can still want more, and they are getting more.

This greed is taking over their love for the sport they play, that is pretty evident. You still see those players that still play the sport they love and don’t see money as the primary reason for changing teams, but not as often as in the past. In the past players didn’t play for the money and even got part time jobs when they weren’t playing. The fact that they could play the game they love and get paid while doing it was amazing, no matter how much they were making. 

 I guess I can’t fully understand the greediness of professional sports players from my point of view. You see, I’m just a college baseball player that doesn’t get paid for playing and plays because I absolutely love the game. I may never be in their situation, but I feel that if I were in that situation I would play for the love despite the money. Sure I would want a decent salary, everyone loves money, but I would be sure not to let it decide where I was going to play or if I would resign with a team. You can’t think like that when you love what you do.

I admire Ray Allen for going to the Miami Heat from the Boston Celtics, though I am a Celtics fan. He didn’t care that he would be making less money in Miami than in Boston, he just wanted to win and he saw Miami as the better place for that. He loves the game, and he loves winning so money is on the back burner for him. I wish that players could take pay cuts and be okay with it. When you think about it, they have money to spare.

Those players that donate some of their money to charity are doing the right thing. They are showing that money is less important to them than helping the less fortunate. When you think about it, these players may be playing for their love still because they are parting with money rather easily. I wish that every player could do this. Every player could have a charity and help the less fortunate or use it to strengthen the lower and middle classes in some way. This is wishful thinking of course, and is almost impossible. If I ever make it there, which I know is also pretty wishful thinking, I will make it a point to not forget my love of the game. No matter how much money I make, if I have some to spare I will donate it to something that will make a difference. If players weren’t greedy, they could make a significant difference. But that’s professional sports for you.

-Eric Proulx

The Beauty of Nature

Have you ever sat outside and just appreciated the beauty around you? Nature isn’t something that’s only beautiful because of the sights, but also the sounds and the smells. It really doesn’t matter where you are, you can appreciate everywhere. Even in big cities there are little signs of nature that you can enjoy, though they are scarcer than in an entirely rural town. And if you grew up in New England then you definitely know the kind of rural town that I’m talking about. If you haven’t experienced the beautiful New England nature in a while, let me paint a picture for you.

Imagine you live deep in the woods in a quiet, almost isolated community. The only people that you really know are those that live in the same town as you or the people that live in one of the other handful of towns that are very similar to yours. In the woods that are around you are countless trails that lead to different places throughout the town and sometimes even into other towns, and you’ve walked all of them. Today you choose to go down your favorite trail; the trail that goes into the woods about 2 miles to a waterfall and continues to an old abandoned hunter’s cabin. All you bring with you is a bottle of water and your cell phone, though you only plan to use it if you run into trouble.

All around you are trees, green and full of birds and squirrels. You can smell all of the different kinds of trees and just that wilderness smell that is indescribable. You can hear woodpeckers, other birds chirping and in the distance you can hear running water. Following the sound you find this running water and wonder where it leads, so you follow it further. You stop at a pond that it comes out of and notice boats and a campfire near the water; someone has found to love this trail as much as you are beginning to. Walking along the pond you realize that there is another river that feeds into the pond, so you keep following curiously.

As you continue walking you wonder what lies ahead. Where does this river start? You walk for a little while longer, enjoying every aspect of your surroundings. Seeing multiple animal tracks you become curious yet again. You don’t know what kind of animal could have made some of these tracks. Maybe a deer, maybe a fisher cat? It’s up to your imagination. As you walk you notice that the sound of water running downstream is starting to get louder. You walk toward the sound and are surprised by what you see. A waterfall. Living in a small rural New England town you never expected that. You stand staring at it for some time, amazed by the beauty within something so simple. Then you keep going.

The rivers beginning was another pond that went into the waterfall and continued downstream, but you are still curious as to what lies beyond. You walk for a little longer and come across a little cabin in the woods, what could this be? As you take a closer look you realize that this is a cabin for hunters to go to and set up a sort of camp in the woods. There’s a bunch of old broken glass all over the cabin from what used to be windows, this cabin likely hasn’t been used in some time. You walk out and notice a rusted old hunk of metal sort of buried in the ground. Having no idea what this is you read the manufacturer label on the side, but you still have no idea. You later find out that this is an old printing press worth about $1,000. After returning home you feel completely refreshed from enjoying the nature around you. It truly is beautiful.

This isn't the waterfall that I was talking about, but it is a waterfall that I saw when I took a trip to Vermont.

 This is a personal example of a specific time that I appreciated nature. I appreciate nature every day, but not always to this extent. Nature is all around us, and it is truly amazing and beautiful.  If you live in a rural town like I did, go out for a walk and take in the nature around you. Pay attention not only to what you see, but what you hear and smell too. And follow your curiosity. For the people that live in the city, take a walk through the city and pay attention to the green areas like parks with a good amount of trees. You too can experience a piece of the beauty of nature. Nature is all around us. Now stop reading and go outside on this beautiful fall day!

-Eric Proulx

Social Skills Dwindling

How often do you think you have face to face conversations with someone? I don’t know the percentage of conversations that are face to face, but I would imagine that it is much lower than in the past. The main cause for this lack of face to face interaction? You guessed it, technology. People are beginning to fall into the pattern of texting or emailing rather than actually meeting with someone or actually talking on the phone with them. There is now very limited interaction in everyday life.

Texting is a problem for so many reasons. Yes it is a quicker and easier way to communicate with friends, but it has its downfalls too. Texting diminishes your social skills and hinders you from actively thinking. Can you think of a time where you texted something to someone without thinking first? I can. This is much more avoidable when you actually talk to the person. It is also becoming a huge problem with drivers. Texting while driving is becoming a very substantial problem and causing accidents all of the time.

The main culprits of this technology dependency are teenagers and early adults. They grew up with technology and don’t know any better. Even though they don’t know any better, this is not an excuse to actively continue to live this way. I myself have problems with social interaction, but I think that I have been getting better. My girlfriend kind of showed me that you can’t really go too far in life without talking on the phone or talking to people in person. She’s completely right. Oh and if you're hanging out with someone, try not to text too much. I've also done this in the past, and to those that have been with me when I did I'm sorry. The person won't want to be around you if you text while you're with them instead of talking to them. And plus it's just rude.

Technology isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but too much of it definitely is. The world cannot become dependent on technology just simply because it’s easier because it will take away from our social skills and who we are as human beings. Human interaction should be a big part of your life, and that human interaction will work towards shaping you as a person. Texting takes away from that human interaction and hinders your growing as a person.

Try it out; give your friend a call instead of a text. Actively work towards becoming less dependent on technology that takes away from our social skills. Not only will it be more satisfying for you, but for the other person as well. I know that when I haven’t talked to someone in a while I would rather hear their voice and be actively having a conversation with them. If they were to text me I would likely be multi-tasking and not completely focusing on the conversation. You don’t have to be dependent on technology for everything, so don’t be for your social interaction all of the time.

Note: Multi-tasking may be a topic for the future, so stay tuned.

-Eric Proulx