Eye on the baseball
Watching my grandson play ball today I noticed how intensely his eye was on the ball. Young children are taught at an early age to keep their eye on the ball in order to get a hit. My grandson also played catcher where keeping the eye on the ball was essential to catching the pitched ball. A missed ball usually meant a stolen base or two.
Growing up and in the civil rights movement, I often heard the phrase keeping the eye on the prize. For me it meant keeping focused on what we were trying to accomplish and not allowing ourselves to be sidetracked and distracted.
Keeping our eye on the prize is something we in the peace movement need to hear. The ‘powers that be’ have become very good at moving us off on a tangents and throwing distractions for us to react to, thus getting our eye off the prize.
The recent event of Israeli attacking humanitarian aid ships on the high seas is a good example of a massive effort by the Israeli and USA governments to distract us from the prize of breaking the inhumane siege of Gaza. Immediately as attention was focused on civilians defending themselves from soldiers’ attacks, there was talk of Israeli doing an investigation, and how Israel was at war with Hamas, the elected government of Palestine and on and on. It was easy to get our eye off the prize of breaking this deadly siege of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
In this culture of multi-tasking, high technology, busy schedules and always doing and doing more, it is easy to take our eye off the prize. Life is full of distractions that make it hard to even see the prize.
I find that using time today waiting for a friend at a Doctor’s visit or watching my grandchildren’s soccer and baseball game tonight a good waste of time to reflect and to empty my mind some, so I can better keep my eye on the prize.
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