Recognition

Cherry

By jxmartin

Sat, 25 Mar 2023
  • 398 reads
4 comments
 
A need to be recognized
We live, for most of the year, in a pleasant golf community in Southwest Florida. Though not as flashy, as some of the surrounding communities, it is an attractive place to spend the Winter months, playing golf, swimming, or engaging in a dozen other activities. Most of our neighbors here are solid, middle-class citizens who have done well for themselves in scores of different careers and businesses. Though few make note of it, their list of life’s accomplishments is large. They have succeeded in life and are now trying to live out their golden years in relative comfort.
The hunt for these achievement awards starts out when we are young. The Nuns used to put a gold, silver or bronze start on our school papers, indicating their approval of our work. Later, many levels of academic achievement come our way, perhaps ending in a scholarship to college and a very good job afterwards. Promotions and raises speckle our careers, indicating higher levels of achievement. Or maybe, you are just able to earn a ton of money that signals that you have arrived. The media, company newspapers papers and other vehicles let everyone know that you have done well. But then, retirement happens and after a few years, sometimes one wonders if anyone still knows that you are alive and occupying space on the planet.
One would think that a lifetime of successes, with the entire array of medals, plaques and achievement awards collected, would be enough recognition for anyone. People would no longer need the “Trophy walls” that are usually left behind in business offices, to impress prospective clients or intimidate rivals. Or maybe, to remind one of past glories.
“Not so,” I would say. In many of the casual Bocce, golf matches or tennis games that you watch, you sometimes get the vibe that this is a gladiatorial contest to the death. Charming, affable men and women, in their late seventies or mid-eighties, play cards or Mah Jong with the intensity of a Gotterdammerung -like struggle. The winner of the match will take over China. The loser of course must have to leap off a tall building in a fit or mournful atonement, or so one would think by the grave intensity of some of the contests.
What is it that fuels this need for peer recognition? What does winning a Bocce match or getting the most correct answers in a Trivia contest mean? Is this an innate drive for excellence? Is it a striving to “ be the best that one can be?” Or, is it something simpler? Perhaps, it is the need for a simple acknowledgement that these folks are still active, alert and in there pitching, in the ball game of life. The rousing cheers of the arena, now long gone, are replaced with the odd plastic trophy or mention in the club newsletter, that this person or that, is a “Champion.” Friends and neighbors all make mention of the award and for a brief time, the treasured limelight has returned its spotlight on the achiever.
So, when next you see a red-faced, older Tennis player grasping his racket with a death grip, or a tensed-up golfer wielding a six-iron like a death club, both staring with demonic intensity at an opponent, sigh to yourself and mutter “It’s okay pal. We know that you are alive and in there trying.” Hopefully, the aging combatant will settle down and not let his aggressively wild stroke be his last.
 
-30-
( 592 words)
Joseph Xavier Martin

 

 

 

 

All reactions:

Mary Martin, Jerry Ginger Duvall and 11 others

 

 

 

Certificate U
Non-fiction
BUFFALO STORIES - Joseph Xavier Martin
Reviews

Comments

Submitted by celticman on

I think you've hit what happens to us all. We don't change, but we do get older. A meaningless match is never meanigless. 

 

Submitted by jxmartin on

Interesting observation, Celticman. Spot on, too.

JXM

Submitted by airyfairy on

As celtic says, you've got it exactly - we need to prove, to ourselves as much as others, that we've still got it, whatever 'it' means to us. Your last paragraph made me smile - proving a point is all very well, but there are limits!

Submitted by jxmartin on

Yes, Airy.There are limits and you do have to be careful of a neighbor drawing umbrage, at comments he/she thinks are specifically directed at them. I usually first take notice of the flaw in my own character and then expand upon it as a story.

JXM