Entry 25.5

Growth. Learning. Maturation. Those three words are the reason that you are here. Or maybe I should say that they should be. Plenty of kids choose to go to college for other reasons. But even if those aren’t the reasons they attend college, all three still happen. For some, college is a time to have fun. For others, like my idiot self, I chose to go to college the first time to follow a girl. I guess I’m not really being fair to myself. I didn’t go to college to follow a girl. I chose the college I went to because of a girl. I know I seem like a decently smart fellow but in reality, I can be really dumb. Anyway, I guess I might as well tell you the story because it definitely helped me grow and mature. We went to high school together and she was a year older than I was. She went off to college and as I went through my senior year, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life.

The year was 2003. Two years earlier two airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a third hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed into a field when passengers fought back. 11 September 2001. For two years I had watched the headlines as Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines were embroiled in the War on Terror. In 2003, I decided that I wanted to be a Navy Seal. When I told my parents I was shocked at their response. See I was raised in a very patriotic house. Every generation of my family on both sides had served in the military. In essence, my parent’s, especially my father’s, response was “Hell no”. I was shocked. I figured based on my father’s service in the Army that he would support me fighting for my country. He told me I was going to college. But I was only seventeen and so one of my parent’s would have had to sign for me to enlist. They wanted me to go to the local state university, but I rebelled and chose to follow my girlfriend 1000 miles south. I was an angry bitter young man and looking back I’m not sure I chose to follow her or if I chose that school just because my parents wanted me to go somewhere else. Either way, I went to college instead of enlisting.

The first degree I earned was a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in Spanish. As part of my minor, I had the opportunity to go to Mexico and travel for 2 months. Basically, an immersive class in Spanish. For two months I hardly spoke a word of English. About the only time I did was when I called to talk to my fiancée (we had gotten engaged six months before I went on this trip). On one of those phone calls, our relationship ended. When I got back to the States, I swore off girls for the rest of my life and decided I wanted to use my degree to join the U.S. Marshalls to get on their fugitive task force. I met another girl in a class that fall that I dated for a few months before she decided she wanted to go out with someone else. I swore off girls again. A couple months later, I met my first wife. By then I had decided that I was going to join the Army. Before I finished school, her brother who was in the Army at the time was in a Humvee that was hit by an IED in Iraq. Thankfully, he was not seriously injured. However, she told me there was no way I was going to be joining the Army. Which is how I ended up becoming a Vermont State Trooper. You should be noticing a pattern by now. I made a lot of plans that never happened. But during all that time, something was happening. I was growing, learning and maturing. If I wasn’t such a stubborn ass, I probably could’ve made a lot more progress than I was, but I wasn’t focused on those things. In fact, I’m not sure I was focused on anything. I’ll be honest, I have no idea what was going on in my head. Some of you might feel that way right now. So, let’s chat about where growth, learning and maturing comes from. Don’t worry, I will be relating this to golf as we go along.

One of the first things you should notice about that story is there was glimmers of hope and happiness going on, but there was a number of things that didn’t go my way and caused pain, hurt and frustration. And not just to me, but to other people as well. Those are the first places that growth, learning and maturing come from: pain, hurt and frustration. Those three things are never where it all begins. Think of them as a seed or better yet, an acorn. That acorn didn’t just come to be. It came from somewhere, in this case a mature oak tree. The oak tree flowers and blooms and those blooms are pollinated resulting in the formation of an acorn. The acorn grows on the tree until it ripens and then it falls. In some instances, a deer comes along and eats the acorn. In others, a squirrel munches on it. In others, the squirrel digs a hole, puts the nut inside, covers it up and forgets about it. While they appear to be three different endings, they are all really the same. The acorn dies, but the result is the release of energy and growth of either the deer, the squirrel or a new oak tree sapling. The original mature oak tree where it all began is a circumstance like standing in 18th fairway and just needing to make par to win. Pollination is a sheer dumb luck in the grand scheme of things. Just incredible that something that is on average 25 microns (0.025 millimeters) in size happens to land on the stigma of a flower that is only 390 microns (0.39 millimeters). Now luck comes in two varieties, good and bad. Luckily for us, a golf ball and sprinkler head are relatively close to the pollen and stigma proportions. In the pollens case, it is good luck to hit the stigma. In our case, hitting the sprinkler head can be good or bad, although we usually associate it with bad luck. Either way, a reaction is sparked. Something new comes from it which grows and matures until it falls in preparation to release its energy. I can tell you the reaction I would have if I ever happened to be hitting an approach shot to win a golf tournament just having to make par and hitting a sprinkler head. Well, the reaction I would’ve had a few years ago. I would’ve been mad, pissed off, and feeling like the universe had it out for me. For a long time, that’s how I would’ve reacted. Remember how I told you I was a bitter and angry young man? There was a reason for that.

I can still remember my parents calling my brother Jeff and I to the dinner table. “How would you like to have a little brother?” my father asked. Jeff and I looked at each other and my father answered the question for us. “You don’t really have much choice.” My little brother Derek was born in November 2001. I was a sophomore in high school at the time. I loved Derek to death. It was so much fun to hang out with him and make him laugh. But man could he be a pain in the butt, like all little kids. Fast forward to October 2002. I was trying to get out the door for school when my mom asked me to help her feed Derek breakfast. I remember being a little perturbed as I liked to get out of the house at a certain time, so I didn’t get stuck behind one of the buses as I drove to school. And that morning was one of those mornings where Derek decided to be a pain in the butt. He was just having fun really, messing with me as he tossed his breakfast around. I don’t remember how long it lasted but I just remember looking at the clock trying to get out of the house, so I didn’t get stuck behind that damn bus. I finally had enough. Derek was doing what all little brothers do to their older brothers; he was pushing my buttons and he finally hit one too many. I left the house in a hurry, angry as all get out, and headed to school. Little did I know that would be the last time I would see my brother alive. Derek passed away from SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, on 22 October 2002. It changed the trajectory of our lives. The reason my parents wanted me to go to that local college? Because they were afraid it would happen again. The same reason they didn’t want me to go into the military. They didn’t want to bury another child. I couldn’t see that then. I could only see my parents being way too controlling in a time in my life where I wanted my freedom. I was already young, dumb and foolish and now I was angry, bitter and resentful as well. It wasn’t until I was going through mental health therapy after my 2019 deployment that I really began to heal and grow in that part of my life. For seventeen years, my last words to Derek, were a secret known only to me and they haunted me. At times they still do. “I hate you.” He was just having fun. He was just playing with his older brother. His smile and laugh as he tossed his food for the umpteenth time. I was just too young, dumb and foolish to see that. I could only see that I was going to get stuck in traffic on my way to school. I like to be in control remember? Except I wasn’t. My selfishness was.

When a golf ball hits a sprinkler head and shoots our ball out of bounds, it is seemingly dumb luck that is going to cause us not to win that tournament. But that is the traffic that was on my mind. It’s not the real story. The real story is the choice that you now get to make. Are you going to be the deer or the squirrel that eats the acorn? Because in that story the only ending for the acorn is death. Sure, its energy gets released, but after that it is over. There is nothing left for the acorn. Or will you be the acorn that the squirrel hides saving it for another day? Because that story continues on. Eventually new life springs from the ground and a new oak sapling begins to grow. I used to think that life just throws things at us, and we just have to grit and bear it. But I was young, dumb and foolish. I didn’t have to grit and bear it. I had a choice. I could be angry, bitter and resentful that the golf ball hit that sprinkler head and shot out of bounds, or I could learn from it. I could grow and I could mature into another oak tree. Thankfully, I was just the acorn that was buried deep, hidden away for years until the choice was given to me again.

More and more these days, I am seeing the importance of growth, learning and maturity. Most of you are already seeing their importance and I’m the one who is twenty years behind. I really didn’t plan on only talking about how pain brings about growth, I had two other points that I wanted to make. I guess we now have a mini-series about growth, learning and maturity now because apparently, I was meant to write more about this topic than I had planned. But at the end of the day, this entry wasn’t all about pain and hurt. It was about choices. We all face choices every day. Those choices are the ones that will stint your growth, stop it all together, or make you blossom and bloom into a bright spot in this dark world. Hopefully for all of you, those choices won’t be thrown at you in the way they were thrown at me. Hopefully those choices come in the form of whether to get work experiences done on time, to practice on days where you don’t want to, or how to react to missed fairway or a putt that lips out. All those choices are just as important as the ones that I have had to make. The results can be the same. You can get angry, bitter and resentful because the result wasn’t what you wanted it to be. Way too easy to do that instead of realizing that a billion tiny things that you can’t even see had to go right for that putt to go in. That 0.1 of a degree can be the difference between hitting the fairway and sending your ball into the range OB off of one. It’s not the event that matters. It’s your reaction. React the correct way and you take a step forward. It’s how you react that determines how you grow or if you grow at all. When you make a mistake, even if it’s pulling the wrong club and dunking it in the water, you can be angry and pissed off or you can learn from it. Listen when I tell you the choices you make are the difference between you being average and you being great. Choose the way of growth, learning and maturity. Don’t be like young me.