Consequences

I don’t usually blog about sports, but I can’t resist on this one.

Last week Richard Seymour was traded from arguably the best franchise in all of professional sports to, perhaps, the worst.

Neither Richard, nor the team who traded him, the New England Patriots wanted this to happen. I’m going to speculate that the team went out of its way to get a long term deal signed with the player before the season started, and that the deal they were offering was lower in terms of pure dollars than Richard and his agent believed that they could get elsewhere.

There’s one more wrinkle here, just in case you aren’t familiar with the story. Twice before, Richard refused to report to work because he believed he deserved a raise. He did this in spite of the fact that he was under contract to do so. Both times the Patriot’s acquiesced so that Richard would end his holdout.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me three times, shame on me.

Rather than going into the final year of the contract, and letting Richard walk away at the end of year with no compensation, the Patriot’s opted to trade Richard for a first round draft pick. He was quoted as saying he was “Blindsided” by the trade.

Really?

There are more things to consider when you enter into a salary negotiation than salary. One thing to keep in mind is where the job is located. The other is the team, or company, that you’re going to work for. You also should consider your friendships and relationships with your present team mates or co-workers. All of these things have value, and are worth trading for a lower salary, especially in the NFL. Richard Seymour is already going to the Hall of Fame. He’s already made gobs of money. He could have made a deal that factored the benefits of staying put, and would have been at home with his wife and kids celebrating a victory last night instead of sleeping in a hotel room 3,000 miles away from them after enduring what will in all likelihood be the first of many losses this season.

As far as respect goes, the Patriots have Richard Seymour statues all over their newly built hall of Fame. They have also paid the man millions and millions of dollars. No one in their right mind can question their respect for Richard Seymour. If they had chosen out of fear or sentimentality to overpay for his services, there would have been consequences to the team that were unacceptable to the organization.

There are consequences to the decisions we make. In economics, these are sometimes referred to as opportunity costs, or unintended consequences. The opportunity cost of being the highest paid athlete at your position might be that you get to make that claim on a losing team.

If you don’t want to honor your contract, and you want to be the highest paid person at your position, that’s your prerogative. You just might find yourself blindsided into being traded to the worst team in Football a week before school starts.

Dreams of a middle aged man

This is a post about dreams… Not in the aspirational sense of the word, but the actual dreams that you have at night when you’ve drifted off, and you’re snoring away.

When I was a child, I dreamt that I could fly.

As a young adult, my dreams were filled with what I can most politely characterize as successful romantic conquests.

Now that I have entered middle age, I’d like to share the dream that I had last night, which I think is a good example of a middle aged man’s dreams. Last night I dreamed that I was able to find the squeegee that I’ve been looking for. It was at WalMart, and it only cost $6. I couldn’t have been more happy or satisfied.

You’re beginning to lose you’re grip on the turkey when even your best dreams are mediocre.

Half Full

Just about a year and a half ago, my family’s world got turned upside down when my daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes just a week after her eighth birthday. There’s no warm up for the treatment regimen for diabetes. You need to start pricking your finger 8 to 10 times a day to test your blood sugar, and injecting insulin with every meal. It’s a grind. Two or more of those finger sticks happen in the middle of the night. There is no day off, and it’s a rare day that my daughter doesn’t shed a tear because she has diabetes.

As a dad, it’s enough to make you feel sorry for yourself. I have to admit that in the last year and a half I’ve indulged in too much self pity.

Last night I read a story that changed my world view from half empty to half full. It was a heart breaking story of a girl whose diabetes went undiagnosed until it was too late. She died of acute diabetic ketoacidosis in the emergency room with a blood glucose reading in the 500’s.

We were very lucky. My daughter’s diabetes was diagnosed during her annual physical. She never got sick. Most kids get very sick before the underlying diagnosis is identified. My wife reminded me that just days after her diagnosis was made, we were in the sticks of New Hampshire skiing. If we hadn’t caught this in the physical, it is highly likely that she would have gotten sick on that trip.

As painful and difficult as this diagnosis is, I am just so happy that my daughter can still have a completely full, productive, and happy life.

We all have our crosses to bear. Viewing your glass as half full will help you to hold onto the turkey.

What's worse than a prison sentence?

I found this story linked on my daily email from Senior Housing News.

A serial drunk driving 48 year old woman has been ordered to serve her five year sentence in a Nursing Home.

Talk about bad PR for the nursing home industry.

This reminds me of a joke my Dad used to tell about the location of his employer’s world headquarters.

Guy #1. Hey, I just won first prize in a contest…. a one week trip to Philadelphia.

Guy #2 What was second prize?

Guy #1 A two week trip to Philadelphia.

One sure way to drop the turkey is failing to properly manage our addictions.

What really counts?

What I have found particularly frustrating about this whole “what to do about healthcare” imbroglio is not so much the answers that the politicians are coming up with. Those actually make sense when you consider the questions they’re asking. What has me talking back to the radio and the TV set like a crazy person isn’t their answers, it’s their total failure to ask the right question.

For what it’s worth, here’s what I think the right question is. The personal computer and the MRI machine were invented around the same time. WHY does a Personal Computer cost so little and work so well that it has become completely ubiquitous, and the MRI remains the same rare and expensive commodity it was 30 years ago? Answer that question, and you can solve the health care “crisis” pretty darn quickly and without a lot of pain.

But, I digress. The title of this post is “what really counts.”

In order to lead the best life possible, we should spend more time asking questions than looking to offer answers.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a bold assertion. The most important of all the questions you could ask is this: “What really counts?”

Lately I’ve found that question to be pretty helpful in planning my day and beyond. When I fail to ask it, I usually wind up having a bad day.

Asking what really counts is a good way to keep your turkey off the floor.

We’re all going to die

I’m sorry if you’re reading it hear for the first time, but, yes, it’s true. We’re all going to die.

Of all the thousands of interactions I had with older folks when I worked in the retirement community business, one that sticks out in my mind was between me and a lady who prefaced a question thusly: Now, if I should die, God forbid….

Now, I would never win a prize for being able to keep my attention focused for a long period of time, but I can’t remember what her question was now, and I probably didn’t hear it then.

If I should die, God forbid???? For an easily distracted person like me, that was a real conversation stopper.

Should I have been the one to break the news to her? If???? And, God forbid??? Most rational healthy people don’t spend a lot of time obsessing about their own deaths, but like it or not, it’s coming for all of us.

Just to put this into context, this wasn't a teenager about to embark on rock climbing trip, or a middle aged man about to go in for a heart surgery... This was a woman in her 80's moving to a retirement community.

It seems to me that once we deal with some of the taboos that exist around death than enable us to talk about it without a lot of “God forbid” prefacing, the better.

Denial of our own mortality is not a healthy thing. It leads to bad decision making, unnecessary hurt feelings, and a lot of pointless worry.

Remembering and acknowledging our mortality is a good thing. It reminds us to treat our friends and family better. It gets us making plans that will make it easier for the people who matter most to us. It brings us closer to God or whatever higher power we’re connected to.

Being okay with our mortality helps keep turkeys from hitting the deck.

No such thing as a free lunch

I’m enjoying the mini-revolt being aimed at the AARP by a small percentage of its membership. I read this week that the group has shed 60,000 members this month in protest of the group’s support of the so-called “health insurance reform” bills that are wending their way through Congress.

Without getting political, I just want to state what I have found to be a great truth in life which is that there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

For years, middle class folks who maintain all different kinds of insurance policies haven’t insured against long term care. The most rational reason for not making that purchase is that two federal programs, Medicare and Medicaid, will provide that kind of care for free.

Really….Don’t we all know that someone is paying for this care, and it’s the generation that follows the recipients of this care that picks up the tab? Not so free after all…

The other thing about “free” care of this nature is that in order to qualify on a long term basis, you need to be on Medicaid, the same program that pays for the care of unwed mothers, orphans, and the poor. In a more candid time, we called that welfare. So, there is a social cost to this “free” care.

Finally, there are the practical limitations. Medicaid pays for semi-private accommodations. Before you decide not to purchase private long term care insurance, you might want to pay a visit to a Medicaid nursing home and see just what kind of care “free care” provides.

Even the best of us can drop the turkey. What’s your contingency plan if you do?