Friends of Dave #431: 🥷 4 types of enemies ❤️
Who raises your game?
Friends, if you are like me and have kids (or had kids) that are into sports, you share a common truth: the months of the year are a constant treadmill that has you shuffling from one practice, game, skill session or tournament to another.
Okay, maybe two truths….because if your kid has equipment (particularly if they are a teenage boy), a certain area of your house is currently filled with a unique foul stench that marks the season.
If you know, you know.
March is always a pivotal month for most because it marks the transition from indoor winter sports to outdoor spring sports. In our house, with our youngest, it is basketball to lacrosse.
This year is a big one because our son is in 8th grade — which means it is his last year of playing in the town “youth sports” program before he goes off to high school in the Fall.
I’m not sure if this is the same in other towns, but in ours it is treated and celebrated as a rite of passage. You know how ancient cultures would send their young people off on a walkabout in nature, making them forage in the wilderness for their own food and build shelter and make fire for a number of days to prove they are ready and prepared for adulthood?
It’s kind of like that in our town with 8th graders that are into sports…except instead of sending them off into the woods, we have midweek season ending banquets at the local wedding reception venue with large trays of chicken fingers and pasta for our community’s young sportsmen and women and their families to pick at while they await a presentation of a season ending trophy….Same difference…..
For some perspective, Friends, it’s not too far fetched to state that these affairs make the Jerry Lewis telethon look like a TED talk…..
A few weeks ago, our son had his 8th grade town basketball banquet. This year was especially notable as my son’s team won their league title — the only age group in the town’s youth travel basketball program to do so….which earned them second helpings on dessert….oh yeah.
All kidding aside, the events may be long, but they are nicely done. The coaches (who are almost all parent volunteers) do a pretty good job of making sure each kid gets sent off with some encouraging words about their individual play, their growth and/or their contributions to the team. Most coaches stick with teams for multiple years, and with it being a small town, they get to know the kids well as they progress from elementary school age to young adults.
My son had a good youth basketball career — he’s wasn’t necessarily the most skilled player, but he worked at it and became a consistent contributor to his team, particularly during crunch time of big games.
At the banquet, his coach said the following about him:
“While he played a key role in big games, perhaps his biggest contribution is he always works hard at practice. He raises the game for everyone — making the players around him better with his effort, intensity and his commitment to the team.”
My wife and I couldn’t have been any prouder to hear this said about one of our kids.
To be clear, he wasn’t the most talented on the team at basketball. He wasn’t the highest scorer. He didn’t have the highest amount of assists. He’s not going to be the next Michael Jordan. But he made his teammates noticeably better — and as a result (direct or indirect) they all experienced what it was like to achieve a goal they had been chasing.
Think about it…don’t we all need someone around us that will help us raise our game?
It could be a mentor.
It could be a manager.
It could be close family member or friend.
It could be just an acquaintance.
Whoever it is, there will come a time when you need an extra boost to get you to do better and raise your game. That’s when you will need them most — and you will appreciate them for being there, whether they realize it or not, to push you to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.
Who is that person that raises YOUR game?
XOXO
Dave
And now a few things to make you smarter…
In a rapidly evolving world, the pursuit of happiness remains one of humanity’s few constants. Yet capturing its essence is no simple task, as it depends on both quantifiable measures and personal perceptions—together providing a deeper understanding of societal well-being beyond mere economic figures.
This map showcases the findings from the 2025 World Happiness Report, an annual publication that measures global contentment based on life evaluations, social support, freedom of choice, GDP per capita, and additional indicators of well-being. The data is drawn from the Gallup World Poll and various supplementary sources.
Buddhist psychologists have identified “Four Enemies” that are obstacles to a happy, fulfilled life. One is visible. The other three concern our feelings and our tendency to self-obsess. The answer to all is found in love.
If you’ve ever stood in line at the supermarket waiting forever because only one in twenty checkout lines is working…If you’ve ever had an app randomly interrupt your day to ask if you love it…If you’ve ever had a bossware-infected laptop demand you click your keyboard to prove you are working…Congratulations. You’ve experienced “measureship,” the management philosophy du jour that’s replacing leadership across the economy.
The promise of traveling from New York to London in less than 60 minutes, or Los Angeles to Tokyo in three hours, has been around since 1949. About 12 years later, the U.S. Air Force’s X-15 became the first piloted aircraft to achieve hypersonic flight, generally defined as reaching a minimum of Mach 5 (five times faster than the speed of sound) or 3,800 mph. Yet the notion of a business jet operating at Mach 5 remained a sci-fi fantasy. That is, until recent advances in design and technology have brought the concept closer to a workable reality.
Being caught off guard by an effective twist is a cinematic joy like no other. Over the years, writers and filmmakers have dreamed up fresh ways of keeping audiences on their toes. Some remain astonishingly bold by today’s standards, while others have had the gleam worn off by the movies they’ve gone onto inspire.