"There's no crying!"

So "League of Their Own"..... chick flick or no?  Yeah, it's loaded with women but it's sports and baseball and there are some classic lines that definitely stir the testosterone soup.  "There's no crying in baseball!" and "It's the hard that makes it great."  Come on, those are awesome lines.  So forget the chicky, girly stuff.  It's a pretty cool movie and I consider it one of my favorites. 

For me I think the movie all came down to Tom Hank's speech about how baseball is suppose to be hard and that it's the hard that makes it great.  If you listened to that monologue and didn't associate it with life then you may have been distracted by that bowl of popcorn you were eating.  Life is a struggle.  It's hard and overwhelming at times.  But it truly is those moments when it's hard that greatness presents itself.  Nothing of any real value is ever achieved by taking the easy way out.  The gifts we're given are wonderful but if we haven't earned them they have no real significance and are easily forgotten. 

I'm glad life is hard.  Now don't get me wrong, I'd never enjoy struggling all the time.  Unless the circumstances require it I don't normally do something that's hard just because it's hard.  If that were the case I'd be doing Calculus and Trig while sifting a cat box and cleaning up dog vomit just for the hell of it.  I do hard things because of the journey.  I do them for the experiences and discoveries I'll have along the way.  I do photography not because I have any exceptional skill.  I do it because I love the creative challenge of trying to capture an image that might elicit a feeling from those that view it.  I've run marathons and triathlons not because I love beating the hell out of myself but because of the tremendous and addictive gratification I feel from accomplishing something that I thought I couldn't.  If running and photography were easy it's a safe bet I wouldn't do them.

It truly is the hard that makes it great.  It's not about medals or awards.  It's about feeling something special about yourself.  Life NEEDS to be hard, to some degree, at least.  If life isn't a challenge to you, if everything seems easy then you're not pushing your boundaries.  I use to say I did all those crazy races because I was trying to find the bounds of my own mortality.  As long as what ever I was doing didn't kill me then there was room for me to stretch even more, to see how much farther I could go before the wheels fell off and my heart exploded.  It was a matter of putting a little fear into my life.  What was it someone said?  "Every day do something that scares you."  I'm not saying you need to take unnecessary risks but putting yourself out there in front of life's obstacles, even if it scares you, does more to determine your character and your sense of accomplishment than anything that is just given to you. 

It's not the finish line that determines greatness.  It's the journey to that finish line and knowing you saw it through to the very end that defines greatness.  To see who you were when you started and to see who you've become when you cross that finish line is the true mark of greatness.