What does going to the Pittsburgh Pirates home opener have to do with becoming better leaders? Nothing. And everything! I can’t think of any facets of leadership I’ll be honing today as I sit in frigid temperatures watching the home team square off against the Atlanta Braves. No easy or difficult steps to follow to being a better leader. Perhaps, perseverance in the face of challenging circumstances, but that’s pushing it.
On the other hand, as leaders we need to have times of renewal and refreshment. Today’s my Sabbath, so I’ll be resting at the ball game. It will also be RE-creation for me as I’ll be attending the game with Bill, my accountability partner of more than two decades. We’ll have the opportunity to catch up with each other in a way we don’t during our weekly accountability check-ups.
I wrote the word recreation as RE-creation intentionally. Many years ago, I used to do leadership talks for a youth and children’s program called Logos. When we talked about the recreational aspect of the ministry we said, we can approach recreation in one of two major ways: RE-creation or wreck-reation. The words are self-explanatory, aren’t they? Perhaps, particularly so when applied to children and young people.
But, the truth is many times what we call recreation is “wreck-reation,” we wreck ourselves physically or emotionally. We compete as if whether we win or lose is a matter of life and death. We leave the experience either pumped with adrenaline, because we’ve won or angry because we lost. That type of recreation isn’t restorative.
The interesting thing is we don’t even have to be participants in recreation for it to become wreck-reation. As we’ve all experienced the word fan isn’t a shortened form of fanatic for nothing. Some folks live and die with whether the home time wins or loses. I’ll be honest, it’ll be more fun for me if the Pirates win, but at this point in my life, I’m not going to sit in the cold for three or four hours, because I think my being there is crucial for the Pirates to win.
I’m going because attending opening day has become a tradition for Kenn, my younger brother and me. He isn’t able to be with me today, so Bill is standing in. Kenn lives in Harrisburg, and we both love baseball, so when Jim, our oldest brother died several years ago, we thought, “If we don’t do something intentional to spend time together, we’re going get old and die and we’ll miss out on being with each other.”
We had travelled to Oregon together a couple of times and spent a week with Jim during his last year with us, and we realized that although we lived just three hours from each other by car, we spent more time together in Oregon that year, than in Pennsylvania. While this is a bit of a tangent, it really applies to the main focus: RE-creation. Relationships are re-creating for all of us. Whether we’re leaders or not, we need time to build relationships, but particularly when we’re leaders we need to carve out time to built them. Otherwise, we tend to lead our business or organization and miss out on what’s ultimately important.
So, I’ll be in Section 314, hopefully not freezing my butt off today, as the Pirates take the field agains the Braves. I won’t be screaming my head off, or living and dying with every pitch. I’ll be talking with my friend Bill and enjoying deepening what is already one of my closest earthly relationships. That will be RE-creational, and I’m looking forward to it.
Here’s to leading better by investing some time in RE-creation–today!