Texas starting pitcher Cole Green delivers against Southern Mississippi in the first inning of an NCAA College World Series baseball game in Omaha, Neb., Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

In this life we are always learning lessons and often the best lessons come from each other. Michael Rodgers had a great comment on the last post. He talked about all that he learned from his hard-working family, "This is so close to the way that my mother was raised. Dirt poor and back where the hollers are so narrow that the dog's have to wag their tails up and down....It was always do it and don't complain with my folks."

When I read his comment there was poetry in his words. I don't think it is just the way he phrased his sentences, but something more than that. He reminds us all of something that we've lost and that is a good understanding of reality. That reality is that no one in life ever taught us life would be fair or that life was on our side. At least in my family they didn't say anything like that. They were always telling us, "Life is hard." When I would get into my super dreamer mode they wanted to make sure I had a good dose of reality, "Robin, life just isn't like that." They weren't trying to discourage me but to prepare me for the challenges to come. That didn't stop me from dreaming, but when those dreams fell short or fell through, then I thought of their words, picked myself up and tried to find a new way...sometimes having to give in to "the way it's always been done."

Somewhere in the past fifty or more years we have created an illusion that blinds us in America. We think that life owes us something and then, when we don't get that desired job, car, home or dream, then we not only have a right to complain, but we owe it to the world to let them know how life has treated us so shabbily. All of the Nike commercials saying "just do it" did not sink in like it did when parents or grandparents were there to guide you (sometimes fuss at you) on how to "do it and don't complain."

I say this because of how in my own life I found myself complaining. Many wise older folk would say, "I learned that complaining didn't do any good and just made the people around you miserable." That wisdom was spoken enough times by enough people in different regions and economic situations that it rang true for me. That wise statement also began to point out how much I complained in my own life.

Growing up in the south raised by strict parents, we weren't allowed to complain or talk back. When I got out on my own I found that lesson was ingrained in me for many years. Then, as my life had more challenges and I saw the world's real obstacles and its unfairness I began to complain. The complaining often turned to self-pity and soon I was having a pity party where I was the only one playing. Life is just that way, throwing us curveball after curveball when we don't play baseball. We don't see what's coming because we didn't know what to expect and even if we had expected that last curveball there was no way we could have prepared for it. That's why they call an unexpected life event a "curveball."

We can carry that analogy a bit further and for those of you who are more baseball literate than I, you know that a batter doesn't complain if a pitcher throws a curveball. They are legal pitches. If a hitter misses a curveball the batter will be frustrated and might curse, but the fact is that curveballs happen just like in life. Complaining doesn't help one focus on the ball for a batter and complaining does not help us focus on what life is about to throw us either. Complaining in fact is a distraction that more often than not, throws us off balance in all circumstances and leaves us further unprepared for the events about to come.

St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1521) was an early monastic who believed that in times of consolation (the good times) we should prepare for the oncoming desolation (the bad times). My counselor at the time thought that was a depressing way to look at life but I found that spiritual practice more realistic because then, when something hard happened, I was more prepared for curveball just by knowing the good times couldn't last forever. I had grounded myself in a reality that life was hard, but I could still be part of the game, part of life and its hard tasks.

When we get out in life and do the job, the task, the work and "don't complain" we learn to focus on what we are doing as well as the world around us. The lesson of "just do it" is a one-sided lesson without the "don't complain" portion. To achieve a goal, to paint a painting, do a math problem, do your homework, do your job without complaining is harder than I would have thought. Somewhere I bought into that illusion that life should be easy because I could buy any food I wanted at the grocery store, could hop in my car and go anywhere. Whatever reason we buy into the illusion, when we complain about life being unfair we are not only limiting the opportunity right before us to grow, we are also ignoring all others around us.

Life is hard work. Life is not fair. I'm telling you now just in case you haven't heard it, but also I'm pretty sure if you've read this far you already know that. When we begin to do the work before us without complaint, the work gets done. Not only that, when we work or act without complaining, things get done faster, more efficiently and usually with greater quality because we are focused on the task. The poetry of life comes in our ability to focus on the moment, to recognize the beauty in a moment of work or to look inward to seek understanding at why a work is so hard. The only thing that life owes us is life...and sometimes it's a curveball.