Sorry is a Sacrament

One of the year’s pleasant surprises for New England baseball fans everywhere was the Boston Red Sox winning of the 2021 American League East Division Series. It was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the home team and none of the baseball experts predicted them to be in a position to compete for a playoff spot this season.

The 2021 Red Sox team was a scrappy and likable bunch of players, fighting until the last out and often coming from behind to win games. They were underdogs all year but managed to squeak into a wildcard playoff position; where they then proceeded to defeat their arch-rival New York Yankees, and odds-on favorites Tampa Bay Rays – before finally losing in the championship series to the Houston Astros.

A lot of the credit for the team’s successful season was given to their young manager, Alex Cora. Alex had previously coached the Red Sox and was praised for leading the team to the World Series Championship in 2018. He was suspended by Major League Baseball for the entire 2020 season, however, when it was discovered that he participated in a scheme to steal the opposing team’s pitching signals back in 2017 when he was working as a bench coach for the Houston Astros.

Trying to steal your opponents signs is a tradition as old as baseball because it can give batters a significant advantage when they know which type of pitch is coming (Fastball, Curveball, Sinker, Breaking Ball, Splitter, etc.). Stealing signs is not against the rules as long as the players manage to decipher the signals using personnel that are on the field.

The most common way teams try to steal signs is for a runner on base to peek in and study the hand signals the catcher sends to his pitcher prior to every pitch and then relay the sign to his teammate standing in the batting box. If a team does not disguise their signals effectively or change them up occasionally, then the opposing team is usually able to decode them.

What made the sign-stealing scheme devised by the Houston Astros and Alex Cora against the rules is that their efforts made use of on-field technology. They used a dedicated camera in the center field stands of their home stadium that was focused directly on the opposing team’s catcher. The video was sent to a monitor near the Houston dugout where Houston players could examine it and quickly decode the signs being sent to the pitcher. Various methods were then used to communicate the decoded pitch signs to the batter, including hand signals, whistling and banging on a trash can. Alex Cora even received the stolen sign information on the smartwatch he was wearing.

Condemnation was swift when the scheme was first revealed to the public in 2019 by a traded Houston pitcher. The whole Houston Astros team was immediately branded as cheaters and the World Series championship Houston won in 2017 came to be seen as illegitimate, tarnished forever by the cheating scandal. Major League Baseball conducted a retroactive investigation in 2019 and punished all the managers it found participated in the scheme with a one year suspension.

This included Alex Cora, who had moved on to manager of the Boston Red Sox and led them to the 2018 World Series Championship. Cora paid a high price for his decision to participate in the cheating scheme. The once proud man lost his job, his sterling reputation, his dignity, and the respect of his friends, family and colleagues. He spent a year exiled away from the game he loved while he watched the media attack his character and his young children suffer because of his sullied reputation.

Despite the harsh judgement, Cora never complained. He sincerely apologized for his actions, admitted his fault in the sign stealing scheme, acknowledged that what he did was unfair to the teams they played against and accepted his punishment as well deserved. It was clear he truly felt remorse for his role in the whole affair.

I found myself becoming emotional while watching Alex Cora lovingly embrace his young 14 year old daughter Camilla in the immediate aftermath of the Red Sox victory over the Rays in the Division Series. A postgame reporter asked Alex what that moment meant to him after serving a year of suspension. Here is the video clip of that special moment courtesy of the MLB Network (along with a transcript of his remarks about his family):

“I’m happy for my family. I put them in such a tough spot last year and for them to be able to enjoy it is very gratifying, I’m very very happy for them. She [Camilla] suffered a lot and it was my fault, and sometimes we make bad decisions, and I made a horrible decision in baseball and I paid the price. But what really hurt me was for them to suffer because of my mistakes. And for her to enjoy this is very gratifying.

Alex Cora, Postgame interview, 2021 ALDS

So many people today are afraid to say they are sorry or admit they have done something wrong. They view apologizing as a sign of weakness and surrender; therefore their egos prevent them from owning up to their mistakes or attempting to repair and heal the hurt they have caused.

Still other people never develop the moral compass or sense of compassion and empathy that is necessary to understand how their actions negatively affect others. They feel entitled, believing that the world revolves around them – and they are so used to thinking about themselves that they have no capacity to think about anyone else.

That is why it was so refreshing to watch how Alex Cora handled the fall out from the cheating scandal. Here was a rare example of an authentic apology, one where Alex confessed remorse for his mistake, admitted that it was wrong, fully cooperated with the investigators, accepted his punishment and attempted to make amends with those who were most hurt.

I can’t help but contrast Alex Cora’s apology with one recently made by the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers. Aaron was widely criticized when it was discovered that he lied to reporters at a press conference when he told them he had been fully “immunized” against the COVID-19 virus. The truth that he had never received a vaccination was only revealed after he became infected with COVID and was forced to go into NFL quarantine protocols.

Rather than apologizing for lying to reporters and his failure to follow mandated COVID-19 safety protocols, Rodgers first tried to explain that when he said he was immunized he meant he had taken some (ineffective) home treatment and he didn’t actually say that he was vaccinated. He inferred that the reporters were to blame because they assumed immunized meant vaccinated.

When that explanation was roundly ridiculed, Rogers tried again by issuing a statement saying that some people might have felt misled by his comments and that he takes full responsibility for the misleading comments.

Notice in this example of a fake apology Rogers never says he is sorry for putting people at risk and he never says he regrets what he did. He apologizes only to those who “felt misled,” as if it was just their feeling, and not his own actions, that were to blame. The reality is that people felt misled because Rodgers misled them.

Rodgers elaborated further, explaining that he believed strongly in body autonomy and that he wasn’t up-front with people because he didn’t want to acquiesce to a “woke culture” or a “crazed group of individuals” who harass those who choose not to get vaccinated. With this explanation, Rodgers again shifts the blame for his wrongdoing. It is not his fault that he lied and exposed others to potential risk, – it is the fault of a group of crazy people and the toxic culture.

After this explanation was also criticized, Aaron Rodgers just refused to talk anymore about the subject. This was probably his wisest decision since bad apologies that blame the victims usually make things worse than saying nothing at all.

Looking in someone’s eyes and offering a sincere apology is not easy. Many people, like Aaron Rodgers, attempt to get by with with fake apologies which seek to avoid responsibility by making excuses, shifting blame, downplaying what was done, invalidating the hurt person, or trying to move on prematurely.

By contrast, Psychologists say that authentic apologies have most or all of the following elements:

• It is freely offered without conditions or minimizing of what was done
• It conveys that the person apologizing understands and cares about the hurt person’s experience and feelings
• It conveys remorse
• It offers a commitment to avoid repeating the hurtful behavior
• It offers to make amends or provide restitution if appropriate

During my lifetime I have given more than my share of ineffective apologies, but it is a life skill that I’m still working to improve because it is impossible for any of us to go through life without hurting someone. As Bob Dylan once sang: “I hurt easy, I just don’t show it; you can hurt someone and not even know it“. We are all human and in the daily course of our existence, no matter how hard we try, there are going to be moments ahead when we are guilty of hurting people. During those moments of our life, we should try, like Alex Cora, to put aside our egos and summon the humility and dignity that is required to repair the damaged relationship and make it stronger.

A good apology is like an offering or a gift that has a supernatural power to heal. The Catholic faith believes that admitting to our faults and seeking reconciliation with God and our neighbors is so important that they have established it as one of the Church’s seven sacred sacraments. The practice of Confession and forgiveness are referred to as a healing sacrament, one in which a spiritual power is believed to be transmitted through channels of divine grace.

During this season of thanks giving and gift giving, may you too come to experience the holy and redemptive power of the Sacrament of Sorry that is just waiting for all of us who seek it out sincerely.

Keep On the Sunny Side

It seems like everyone I talk to believes that 2020 was a terrible year. It’s easy to understand why given the COVID-19 pandemic, the global recession, numerous episodes of racial injustice, refugees fleeing their homes, continued global warming, and to top it off, a bitter election year battle for the soul of the America.

Every day we are assaulted with negative news about wars, shootings, protests, pollution, inequality, poverty and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. These stories suggest that the world is in bad shape and many people living today are convinced that things here on earth have never been worse.

Despite all the depressing news coverage, people ought to be told that the world has actually never been better than it is right now. As hard as it is for us to believe – humans, as a species, are doing a lot better than we ever have.

That is the conclusion that Harvard professor and acclaimed science writer Steven Pinker comes to in his 2018 Ted Talk and in his book Enlightenment Now. Pinker argues that the world is not that bad. In fact, he says when you look at all of the objective data, our world is in the best shape it’s ever been and humanity is improving every day. He concludes that now is the best time in the history of the world to be alive.

We know that people did not live well in the distant past, regardless of how much money they had. For the vast majority of human history — if you were lucky enough to survive childbirth, life really was nasty, brutish and short. It was lived at the edge of starvation, and to modern eyes it looks unpleasant, boring and sometimes terrifying.

Pinker uses numerous categories as a yardstick to measure the variety of ways that the world is better for humans now compared to the past:

We’re all Living Longer

The average life expectancy of people today compared to the past clearly shows that humanity is flourishing. Just 250 years ago, one-third of children in the world’s richest countries did not live to see their fifth birthday. Today, even in the world’s poorest countries, more than 94% of children survive past their fifth birthday.

The life expectancy of a person born in England in the year 1558 was 22 years old! It slowly increased over the next few hundred years but it wasn’t until 1907 that the average life expectancy reached 50.

Today the average worldwide life expectancy is 70 years old and in developed countries it is over 80. There is nowhere on Earth where life expectancy is less than 50.

The advancements we’ve made globally in the last 100 years, even in our poorest, most war-torn countries, are incredible. The life expectancy in Somalia today is higher than the highest life-expectancy of any country in the world 100 years ago. In this respect even the poorest of third world countries is better off today than the richest, most powerful countries were in the early 20th century.

It is hard for those of us living today to imagine living during a time when so many people died so young. But all you have to do is walk around an old cemetery of people who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries to get an idea of how commonplace it is to encounter the gravestones of infants and children who died at a very young age; and how remarkable it is to encounter a gravestone of someone who lived past 80.

As an example, during a recent hike I came upon an old cemetery and was struck by the tragic family gravesite of Ansel & Esther Howard. They had three daughters: Sally born in 1825, Silvia born in 1827 and Nancy born in 1834. All of them died young. Nancy in 1836 at the age of 2, Silvia in 1845 at the age of 18 and Sally in 1846 at the age of 21. What heartache their parents must have suffered.

Family Gravesite of Ansel & Esther Howard

We’re Healthier Now

A big factor behind the gradual increase of human longevity has been incremental advancements made by the medical field over time. The discovery of antibiotics, vaccines, targeted medicines and proven disease treatment protocols – along with the increasing availability of clean tap water – have kept us alive and made our lives less miserable.

Our increasing knowledge of the human machine and how to keep it healthy has directly led to more people adopting healthy lifestyle regimens (diet, exercise and sleep) that when followed prevent or delay the onset of aging related diseases.

Thanks to the discovery of antibiotics like penicillin, developing an infection does not have to mean death or the amputation of a body part; and thanks to vaccines, virulent contagious diseases like Smallpox (which was responsible for the deaths of more than 300 million people in the 20th century) no longer terrorize the earth.

We’re Safer Now

If you only paid attention to the news, you would probably think that crime is at an all-time high, when in actuality the American crime rate is at a 50 year low and roughly half of what it was in 1990. In the last thirty years alone, the homicide rate has dropped from 8.5 per 100,000 to 5.3 per 100,000.

There is also less conflict between countries today. Before the advent of modern democracies most of the world was run by fanatics and madmen like Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan who would destroy entire cities and murder their populations over the slightest provocation.

During the 1950s, there were an average of six international wars per year going on, with approximately 250 people per million dying war-related deaths. In the last ten years the world has averaged only one war per year with less than 10 people per million dying per year. There has also been a reduction in the number of nuclear arms from more than 60,000 in 1988 to 10,325 in 2017.

There are still far too many conflicts in the world, but as hard as it might be to believe, there are much less of them than there ever have been before.

And let’s not forget that a great Civil War was fought to eliminate the scourge of a robust slave trade that abducted millions of Africans, shipped them to foreign shores where they lived in bondage and were subjected to the atrocities of rape, beatings, family separations, lynchings, racial hatred and political disenfranchisement.

Other developments over the last 50 years years that have served to make us safer include:

• Labor laws ensuring greedy businesses do not exploit children or force workers to toil under unsafe operating conditions.
• Civil rights laws preventing discrimination against employees and job applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age.
• Department of Transportation agencies establishing codified safety standards for automobiles, highways, railroads, aircraft, boats and the safe transport of hazardous materials.
  • Because of our adherence to these safety standards over the last century we’ve become 96% less likely to die in a car accident, 88% less likely to be killed on the sidewalk, 99% less likely to die in a plane crash, 95% less likely to be killed on the job, and 89% less likely to die from a natural disaster.
• Environmental Protection regulations protecting the nation’s air, land and water from being polluted by the waste generated by the Industrial Revolution.

Prior to these environmental protections laws, the industrial waste generated by factories was allowed to be dumped directly into the environment poisoning the air, land, and water and sickening the people who came in contact with it. Thirty years ago in the US, there were 35 million tons of hazardous particulate matter in the air, today that has been reduced by 40% to 21 million tons.

As a young boy growing up in the 1970’s I remember there were rivers that were considered too polluted to fish because they were downstream from a paper mill or factory. Other rivers had no fish because they had been killed from the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide compounds that poured into the streams in the form of “Acid Rain”. Today, these rivers run clean and the fish thrive.

There is Less Poverty Now

Global poverty is one of the worst problems that the world faces. The poorest in the world today suffer with diminished health because they are often hungry, poorly educated and have no reliable access to electricity, plumbing or medical care.

For much of history, only a small elite enjoyed living conditions that would not be described as ‘extreme poverty’ today. But with the onset of industrialization and rising productivity, the share of people living in extreme poverty started to decrease. Over the course of the last two centuries, one of the most remarkable achievements of humankind has been the reduction in the share of people that are living in extreme poverty.

Two hundred years ago 90% of the people in the world suffered from extreme poverty, today less than 10% do. As recently as 50 years ago, half of the people in the American South lived in extreme poverty and had no hope of improvement – but today no southern state has a poverty rate higher than 20%.

Cutting the global poverty rate in half since 1990 has translated into approximately one billion less starving, desperate people in the world today.

The trend continues to be positive due to globalization of the world’s economies and government social programs that provide aid to the needy. It is important however, for us living today to recognize how incredibly privileged we are to live at a time when, thanks to technological advancements, even the poorest citizens live in more comfort than the richest kings of yesterday.

We’re more Educated Now

When my mother was a young girl growing up in the 1930’s she was lucky to attend elementary school through the 7th grade. She was part of a farming family and her father thought it was more important for her and her seven siblings to stay home and help him run the farm.

That was the norm back when children were put to labor at an early age on the farm or in the factories. Educating children was not a priority or a requirement, so many children never participated in formal school training.

Before the 17th century, only 5% of Europeans could read or write. Today, more than 90% of the world’s population under the age of 25 can read and write. Literacy is at an all-time high and a more educated populace has had a direct effect on lowering the global poverty rate.

In addition, patriarchal dominated systems around the world are now being pressured to offer equal education opportunities for the women in their country that were denied in the past.

We’re more Productive Now

Constant advancements in science and technology have been the foundation underlying most of the reasons why humans are better today. Poverty, life-expectancy and quality of life are all better because science is being harnessed to make us more productive.

Take hunger as an example. Back in the 1970s, many people were concerned that the world would not have enough food to keep up with the growing population. That fear was portrayed in the old movie Soylent Green. Food shortages would have been a major problem indeed, had not science made remarkable advancements in the areas of agriculture and food-resource management which enabled the food industry to exponentially increase their crop yields.

People also have more free time today to devote to productive pursuits because new labor-saving gadgets have been invented that dramatically reduce the amount of time we spend doing housework. In the last 100 years, the average time spent doing housework has fallen from 60 hours a week to fewer than 15 hours a week! That gives modern humans an additional 45+ hours per week to spend pursuing productive activities, making it possible for women to leave home, join the workplace, and make positive contributions to society.

Finally, the advent of the world-wide Internet and global cellular communications has had a tremendous multiplying effect on society’s productivity. We take it for granted today that most everybody has a smart phone genie in their pocket that, within seconds, can connect them to anyone at any time, give them precise directions on how to navigate to any destination, play any song ever recorded or answer any question that they can think up.

None of this technology existed 20 years ago. Think about how amazing it is that you can find just about anything you want within seconds – a book, a movie, a new pair of boots. We get to live in the kind of world that used to be imagined only in science-fiction novels. My 92 year old mother, who we are training to use an iPad, stares at us in wide-eyed wonder when we show her what she can do with the device. She can attend her Church service, visit with her grandchildren and watch her soap opera all without leaving her chair!

Of course, constant communication and information overload also plays a part in explaining why everyone is so convinced that things in the world are so bad now. Everything is so immediate, the entire world laid out in real-time before us – and that can be scary and stressful.

But the information overload may actually help save us because it makes us look the world in the face and confront all the evil that has nowhere to hide anymore. We can’t pretend George Floyd wasn’t unjustly killed because we all watched him slowly murdered by the police on our TV screens and Twitter feeds. In a sense, the outrage, horror and disgust that gets generated by exposing these heinous events actually helps keep the world from spinning further out of control by bending the arc of the moral universe further toward justice.

Contemplating all the ways that the world is better for humans today compared to the past was a good exercise for me because, as my wife reminds me, I do have a tendency sometimes to focus on the negative (when I do this, my wife calls me Eeyore because my behavior reminds her of the gloomy sidekick character portrayed in the Winnie the Pooh children’s books).

You can always fool yourself into seeing a decline if you compare the constantly bleeding headlines of the present with the rose-tinted memories of the past.

Pinker concludes that while the world still has plenty of problems to solve, it’s healthier for us to look at the big picture and see the glass as half full. “We will never have a perfect world, but there’s no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing and if we think of issues like climate change and nuclear war as problems to be solved instead of apocalypses in waiting.”

I have a new appreciation for all the blessings that come with living in the present age, I feel grateful to be a beneficiary of all the progress the world has made, and I look toward the future with optimism, in the hope that it will be an even better world for my grandchildren.

So, I salute 2020 as the best year ever! Henceforth, whenever I feel my inner Eeyore rising, I will remember how good I have it and remind myself to always keep on the sunny side of life.

There’s a dark and a troubled side of life
There’s a bright and a sunny side, too
Though we meet with the darkness and strife
The sunny side we also may view

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way
If we’ll keep on the sunny side of life

Lyrics to old Folk Spiritual “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life” as sung by the Carter Family

The Eye is the Jewel of the Body

I have been battling a stubborn eye infection for the past 6 weeks. It started with symptoms of redness, swelling, weeping and tenderness in my left eye. Within two weeks my right eye also became infected – eventually becoming worse than my left eye.

To complicate matters, this infection happened to occur during the peak of the coranavirus pandemic – which made it very challenging to meet with doctors and schedule health care appointments.

I managed to book a remote tele-health appointment with my primary care physician, who guessed that I had some form of bacterial conjunctivitis. He prescribed a 7 day course of both oral and eye drop antibiotics that he believed would clear up the infection.

At the end of my seven day treatment, however, my eye infections were really no better. I scheduled a second tele-health visit with another physician who prescribed a different eye drop treatment that contained a more powerful antibiotic.

As soon as I began the new treatment my eye condition became dramatically worse . My eyes began to water constantly and the eyelids became so inflamed and swollen that I could barely open them. My eyes looked and felt as though they had been through a losing 15 round boxing match.

Panicking a little at this development, I began to put double doses of the eye drops in my eyes, hoping that the extra antibiotics would hasten my recovery from the infection. But this only seemed to make my condition worse.

At this point, my doctor recommended that I visit my nearest Urgent Care facility to have my eyes examined. The doctor there believed that my body was having an allergic reaction to the antibiotic eye drops which was causing my eyelids to swell and my eye ducts to become clogged. I was told to discontinue my current treatment immediately and see an eye specialist.

Fortunately, I was able to get an office appointment with an eye doctor who looked at my eyes under a microscope and swabbed them to determine what type of bacteria was the culprit. Based on the examination, I was prescribed a combined steroid/antibiotic treatment and instructed to regularly massage my eyes with hot compresses to help open up the clogged eye ducts.

It was a relief when my eyes began to slowly improve under the positive effects of this new treatment and I am thankful that my eyes have almost returned back to their normal condition.

The whole experience though has given me a greater appreciation of the role the eyes play in our daily life and how important they are to our overall well-being. As Shakespeare observed in Romeo & Juliet “He that is stricken blind can not forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost“.

Picture Courtesy of Colin Maynard @invent

A number of emotions and concerns took root in my mind while I was battling the course of this malady:

Vanity – According to Henry David Thoreau “The eye is the jewel of the body” and the eyes are indeed the focal point of human relationships – and usually the first thing we notice when we encounter somebody new. It is considered a sign of respect and good manners in our society to look directly into a person’s eyes when you greet them.

So you can imagine that during my ailment I became very self-conscious of my appearance and was reluctant to be seen in public without covering my eyes with sunglasses. My own wife suddenly shrank from my embrace and jokingly began calling me lizard eye.

Because one of the symptoms of the Covid-19 virus happens to be inflamed eyes, the people I encountered seemed to become especially nervous around me. Believe me when I say that once people had a good look at my face they went out of their way to keep socially distant from me.

Fear – As my eye condition continued to deteriorate and stubbornly resisted all forms of treatment despite the use of powerful antibiotics, I began to experience feelings of fear and anxiety over the inability to use my eyes during my everyday routines. I started wondering if there were a real possibility that the illness might cause some kind of permanent damage to my eyesight.

My right eyelid became so swollen that I could only pull it open using my fingers and both eyes watered so much that my vision became very blurry. It became difficult and uncomfortable to do all the everyday ordinary things that requires functioning eyesight (like reading a book, watching a show, working on the computer or tying a fishing knot).

It forced me to consider in the back of my mind how different life would be and how my daily activities would need to change dramatically in order to live with diminished eyesight.

Magnification of other senses – Studies have shown that people who are blind tend to have enhanced abilities in their other senses. Detailed brain scans comparing the brains of people who are blind to the brains of people who are not blind show that individuals with impaired sight have heightened senses of hearing, smell and touch.

I’m not claiming that my other senses increased to superpower levels to compensate for the deterioration of my eyesight – my loss was too short term to re-wire my brain – but what I can say is that my malfunctioning sense of sight caused me to focus more on my other senses and to derive increased pleasure from them.

I closed my eyes and amused myself by listening to music and audio books, I delighted more in the smell of the pleasant scents wafting in the breezy Spring air and in the satisfying mix of flavors in my food, I relished the feel of soaking in the tub and submerging my tender eyes in the warm water.

Now that my eyes are on the mend I must remember that I am failing to appreciate the fullness of life when I let one or more of my senses dominate at the expense of the others.

Simultaneously employing all our senses in concert to their full capacity helps us to live our life in High Definition with Surround Sound quality rather than the limiting Black & White and Mono soundtrack experiences that are provided by the individual senses.

Compassion and Empathy – When we are in the bloom of health, it is human nature for us not to think about the difficulties that other people living with disabilities and impairments must face during the course of their daily life.

My brief encounter with sight impairment gave me a new appreciation for people who must live permanently with one or more disabilities that makes living inconvenient and challenging.

We are told it is a healthy practice to count our blessings and to have a grateful heart. Most people when they count their blessings only think about how grateful they are for the good things in their life. This experience has reminded me that it is equally important for me to be thankful for the afflictions that I have been spared.

When our lives are not burdened by birth defects, diseases, sicknesses, poverty or addictions we find it difficult to show compassion or relate to those who struggle with one or more of these issues every day.

It is good every now and then to put yourself in the shoes of those who are walking a hard road and to remind yourself how you would like to be treated if you were in their shoes – because someday you may be.

As unpleasant as my adventure with this eye infection has been, it has also been a positive learning experience because it has given me a new perspective about the vanity of vanity, forced me to confront and overcome my fears, reminded me to use all my senses to their full capacity and encouraged me to treat with compassion all those who are living with handicaps.

I know that my eyes will eventually fail me as I age, just like the rest of my body will, but I do believe the overall vision I gained from this experience will stay with me until the very end.