August 2011 Good Ole Uncle Vic

August 5, 2011 By: Victor Brick

Hello, everyone. August: the last full day of summer. Where does the time go?

The answer to last month’s trivia question: Who was the Union commanding general at Gettysburg? Why, George Meade, of course, a Pennsylvania man.

This month’s trivia question: Both Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple started their companies in what humble location?

Last month Lynne and I visited our good friend, Mark Harrington, in Massachusetts. Like us, he is also in the health club business. We flew into Boston to look at some of his clubs and then we drove one and one-half hours to his new beach house in Cape Cod at the Wychmere resort. We had a great time with Mark and his partner, Amy, and a continual stream of houseguests including Amy’s two son’s George and Webb, Mark’s youngest son, Matt and his girlfriend Tova, and Amy’s parents. We hung out at the beach, played tennis, went jogging, hung out at the pool and drank a lot of frozen margaritas.

One day we went out on Mark’s boat and tried to go to Nantucket but the seas were too high so we went to Monomoy island and swam and climbed the sand dunes instead. When we were out on the boat, Lynne referred to the sea as La Mar, which is the feminine version of ‘the sea’ in Spanish. However, the sea that day was really ‘El Mar’, which is the masculine version in Spanish. It was rough and aggressive instead of calm and nurturing.

It reminded me of my favorite book, The Old Man and the Sea. You all remember The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an old, Cuban fisherman who fights valiantly to catch a huge marlin only to lose it to sharks; “He was an old man and he fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone 84 days without taking a fish.” In the book, the old man, Santiago, talks about how the sea can be both ‘La Mar’ and ‘El Mar’, depending on the situation. Let’s take the tsunami that recently hit Japan. The communities that were most devastated were the ones closest to the ocean and that depended most on it for subsistence. One minute the sea is bringing life, the next minute, death; La Mar, El Mar!

The same is true for so many things in life. One minute something can be good luck, the next minute, bad luck. The important thing is to keep things in perspective. Keep your humility when things are going well knowing they can turn in a moment, and keep a positive attitude when they aren’t, knowing things can turn around in those situations as well.

‘La Mar’ and ‘El Mar’ are really the same thing. It just all depends on how you look at it.

Thought for the day: Constantly move in the direction of your dreams.