Tossing the Ball Around

I've never been a sports person. There, I said it. I'm not exceptionally coordinated and I just don't like people touching me (give a guy a break!), but one thing that I love to do and find surprisingly therapeutic, is tossing a ball around.

After I get over the fact that I'm probably not positioning the laces just right in my hand or "reaching into the cookie jar to pull out a cookie," I'm actually able to enjoy myself and when I do, I find that it even helps improve relationships. Let me illustrate:

The last night I hung out with my best friend before he went on his mission, we tossed a baseball for a couple hours. He was battling with the emotional insecurity that comes from facing the unknown, and I was trying to deal with not having a best friend around to fulfill my inexhaustible need to be with another human at all times. He picked the ball up from the floor and we started throwing it back and forth as we sat on the floor in his living room. We didn't have gloves and we weren't even far away from each other, but we laughed amid each throw and each catch and we dealt with a very unfamiliar experience in a familiar way. After a while, we set the ball down said our goodbyes, but even though we were walking our separate ways, we were closer because of that game of catch. And when I look back at my life, I single that experience out as one of the most poignant.

Last night, I felt the same ball-tossing magic as I played catch with my buddy Sebastian. I wasn't thrilled at the idea when he brought it up, but we started throwing the ball and the conversation just started flowing. I've been mentoring Sebastian for several months now and I haven't felt a strong connection to him. I've worried a little that maybe I'm not the right mentor for him. Maybe he needs someone else who can connect a little better. I was a little surprised when after the hour session—which consisted of me tossing the ball as high as I could and him clapping his hands as many times as he could until he caught it (a game he came up with)—to find that I felt an affinity to him I hadn't felt before. We didn't talk about anything deep, we didn't breakdown any emotional walls, but we talked. We talked without thinking about what we were talking about. We talked without planning what we were going to say and we seemed to connect more than 15 previous sessions have ever done.

I guess the point of all this is to say that even though I don't own anything with any sports team's insignia on it nor fill out a March Madness bracket EVER, I appreciate the good that can come from playing catch every now and then.