Letters to Tom — Balance

Dear Tom:

In your response to my recent letter you recite Inyat Khan who once said:

What the world calls success is, to me, like a doll’s wedding.
Failure in life does not matter; the greatest misfortune is standing still.

I am trying to find the balance between patience — taking a breath , and action on the other hand. I feel like a batter facing a pitcher. The pitcher teases me with pitches just off the corners of the plate. I know at some point he will have to throw me “my pitch” the one I am waiting to hit, but it is so difficult to not swing until “my pitch” is thrown. I fear that it will never be offered and my time at bat will be for naught. Why not take a swing at a different pitch and try and make something of it? How will I know when it comes It may look like a change-up coming right over the plate, and at the last minute it drops into the dirt – in reality, a disguised curve.

A seasoned ballplayer knows that if he is patient, works the count, and fouls off the pitcher’s attempts to sneak a pitch by him, that ultimately “his pitch” will come his way. We know that if we are patient, centered in God, and can foul off life’s attempts to strike us out, than eventually our opportunity will come. But just as importantly when that opportunity reveals itself we have to knock it out of the ball park. There can be no holding back, no laying down a bunt, or settling for a single. When we receive our call –our pitch – we must swing with reckless abandon and run like the wind. Safe or out we will have played the game the way it was meant to be played.

Your Friend,

Webb

About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.

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