Thanks Trenton Village for summer camp

I would like to thank Cindy Alexander and the staff at Trenton Village for offering Summer Camp last week. Everything from the lunch choices to Fred Bird was a big hit with my grandson who can't wait to go back next year. It was a wonderful way to spend a hot summer day and make new friends of all ages.

Pehg Zeller

Things change, but people really don't, at least not much.

I was reminded of that Saturday at a Wesclin football practice. I was there to take some pictures of the players eating watermelon to celebrate the end of "two-a-day" practices. I got there a little early and caught the tail end of practice, which ended at just about the peak of heat.

At first, I pulled up and sat in my air-conditioned car for a while, to mitigate the wilting effects of the hundred-degree day. When I saw the boys lining up for wind sprints, I got out of the car and snapped off a few.

I sat on a bench so hot it branded a woodgrain pattern in the backs of my legs when I got up, and I broke out in a pretty healthy sweat just sitting there and squeezing the shutter. I admired the players for their suffering.

I can hardly remember what it felt like to be willing to suffer for your passion, or to even have much of it, for that matter.

Sooner or later we all figure out that most of what we think is important in life doesn't amount to spit, and that, in fact, there isn't really anything important in life.

Nonetheless, it's our duty to proceed through the normal course of things, and to prepare our young for the rigors of making lives for themselves. If there isn't a real point to our existence--an "end" to our sometimes peculiar "means"--that only underscores the importance of the means. It's all there is.

So we try to teach our children about the "nature" of things, even while every natural instinct they have screams against it. We teach them about the rewards of sacrifice, and the merits of responsibility, and they look at us quizzically, like so many puzzled Schnauzers. If responsibility and sacrifice are the natural way of things, why do they crave self-indulgence and sloth?

We know--or we should--that the only worthy rewards we receive in life are the ones we suffer for. In the words of Bob Dylan, "behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain." With the artist, the pain is incidental to life. With the athlete, it's self-inflicted.

This basic lesson must be taught without understanding, like "muscle memory"... an instinct evolved.

Nowhere is it more evident than in sports, where the coach begins by teaching the elements that will be necessary for success, even while the players don't yet understand why. The coaches who try to explain their methods are usually the coaches who fail.

The traditional formula for success is this: Don't ask questions. Just do it. It's very similar to brainwashing, really.

I wasn't considering all the metaphysical stuff while I sat there, and in general I try to avoid thinking too much about the cosmos. It's a little depressing, honestly, and really doesn't change things.

I was only thinking about how freaking hot it was, and wondering how the players were going to finish those sprints after a long, hot practice.

It was tougher on some than others, and most of my empathy was for them. How can you be expected to consider the long-range benefits when all you can think of is to stop? You can't. You're just doing what you're told, and learning your capabilities, and that's the way you achieve whatever it is that we brand "success." Three-car garage. Vacations in the Hamptons. Personal actualization. Whatever.

It's a lot like religion. It ain't going to work unless you have faith. Unless you suspend disbelief.

In a weird way, I think the young people who veer off the track are the more perceptive ones, who come to a basic understanding of life before they're mature enough to handle it.

They question "the system" because there's no payoff at the end. When everything gets tallied up, you're just as dead as the next guy.

The blunt reality of that is tempered by the fact that we have our transient pleasures, and they are only made real by our equally transient suffering. You can't feel good without having felt bad. There may not be a pot of gold, but there's still a rainbow. And if there's not pot of gold, the rainbow IS the pot of gold... or something.