By Julie Buehler
“Some things are easy and some things are hard. And just because something isn’t easy doesn’t mean it’s hard.”
Simple, huh?
I learned that some years ago trekking through trials and tribulations that, at the time, seemed hard, but in retrospect were barely a blip on life’s radar, and this wisdom was reaffirmed to me this past week while on vacation.
I was in Hawaii (tough, right?), visiting Pearl Harbor, the site where more than 2,500 Americans were killed and our nation was forced into World War II, considered the bloodiest war in the history of mankind.
I sat in awe as I learned of the incredible, extensive efforts required to restore 18 of the 21 sunken or damaged vessels that had previously occupied the harbor.
THAT was hard work.
“Recovery work began at once. Navy and civilian teams mounted a heroic effort, on a scale never before attempted, to restore sunken ships to service. Salvage workers faced many hazards- jagged metal, explosions, toxic fumes. Fuel oil fouled ship interiors. Air reeked of decaying bodies. Divers worked in murky water to find blast holes. Shipyard workers devised huge patches, pumps and cofferdams, air-filled pontoons, and vast arrays of cables and winches. Of the 21 vessels sunk or damaged, all but 3 rejoined the fleet.”
This was the excerpt I read, tears in my eyes, imagining the ardent fervor and dedication of those in the recovery effort. Diving in oil-filled, dirty waters, inventing new ways of fixing broken vessels, helping find the bodies of fallen sailors, soldiers, friends and civilians killed in the attack.
Why’d they do that? Why would they risk their lives, dedicate countless hours and days and months to recover mangled metal and shards of history?
Certainly not because they had to, but perhaps because they needed to.
Those who fought and lived through WWII were a different breed. They didn’t care about hard work, they cared about results.
Every facet of the effort was excruciatingly hard, except the decision to commit to it.
THAT part was easy.
I’ll avoid waxing poetic about The Greatest Generation, whose contributions to our nation are extraordinarily far-reaching, substantial and have endured despite a current “Twitter” culture that seems insistent on ignoring history.
That’s because they knew the difference between easy and hard and were willing to avoid the easy out, do the hard work to accomplish actual results.
I generally discuss sports in this space and am passionate about my teams, competition and the great litmus test that sports offer. And I also realize sports are just a game and the “hard work” required to be a collegiate or professional athlete pales in comparison to the “hard work” required to be a soldier, sailor, Marine, police officer, or any other service man or woman.
But we don’t hear much about that.
We don’t see Gatorade commercials showcasing your local firefighter comforting a young girl who’s lost her family’s home or the sheriff’s deputy who was called by neighbors to solve a domestic disturbance.
We see million dollar athletes paid more millions to exemplify their sweat and “hard work” while teachers tirelessly working in the classroom sweat out failing education systems and kids that come to school with bruises and hard-to-find smiles.
Reality can be tough to face, but as I learned in Pearl Harbor, when people face reality with irreverence to any supposed difficulty or hardship, amazing things happen, resurrecting spirits and guiding generations to come.
I recognize it’s not easy to be a professional athlete. But just because something’s not easy, doesn’t mean it’s hard.
And keeping that perspective while we enjoy sports, without worshipping athletes, will help keep the ups and downs, ins and outs of sports in the proper perspective.
Julie Buehler hosts the Coachella Valley’s most popular sports talk radio show, “Buehler’s Day Off” every day from 1-4 on 1010 KXPS, the valley’s all sports station. She can also be seen every morning between 6-7am on KMIR sharing the coolest stories in sports. She’s an avid gym rat, slightly sarcastic and more likely to recite Steve Young’s career passing stats than American Idol winners. Tune in M-F 1-4 pst at www.team1010.com or watch “Buehler’s Day Off” on Ustream and KMIR.com for her sports reports.
