march 15, 2001
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Ankiel's Heel.

Awesome Ankiel is fighting back. Twenty-one year old Rick Ankiel and the St. Louis Cardinals were hoping to forget about his, first time in 110 years, nine wild pitches in last years post season play. "Rick has too much confidence and too much arrogance to have this affect him," pitcher Matt Morris is quoted as saying. But Rick Ankiel himself says, "I don't think it's going to be easy, it's something that you have to battle and you have to concentrate every time you go out there." Catcher Mike Matheny says "He had adversity and still kept pitching. He kept focusing...getting back up there and making his pitches." Knoblauch, Piersall, Ankiel, we need you guys.

Rick Ankiel is paid extra in the market place of talent to become a marvelous example of how we benefit from celebrities and superstars who offer their lives as open books for our reading. As personally responsible agents in this effort, we will watch, learn and contribute to Ankiel's descriptions of how the mind works. He struggles from inside the same kind of brain as do you and I, his wild pitch is like another man's dysfunction, there is much here to learn.

As a role model attracting Boomers, gen X'ers and gen e's into gen W, or "Generation Wisdom", Rick Ankiel puts on display his confident attempt to climb back on the pitcher's mound after his World Series jitters. For the majority of us, recovery is usually from the mundane of lost jobs, bankruptcy, failed relationships, backfired pleasures, injured bodies, crack happy crashes, drunken stupor, embarrassed isolation, and/or impulses of unpleasant personality. "Generation Wisdom" is my effort to describe people from all over the world who freely choose to live their lives in relationships with others as contribution to solution. Generation Wisdom explains how significant each person's life is for the future of freedom, we need you now more than ever.

Ankiel's conflict is not unconscious nor is it insane. Lingering in the land of imagination lie memories of all our failings. Dysfunctional role models wound and scar us, forcing repetitiously compulsive rounds of self destruction, then leaving the next generation with the responsibility for correction. Generation Wisdom learns to tell The Story of Freedom, the language of willingness to do whatever it takes to preserve our freedom of choice, our legacy to the world, choosing to pitch again.

How to rescue ourselves from confusion, this is where Rick Ankiel's contribution begins. How will he do it? His unique story of healing explains the tug-of-war between stories we all confront. His battle for freedom to choose wisely recruits our willingness to explain the same about ourselves.

"How the mind works," organized around "Emotional Anatomy," a new vocabulary that invites Rick Ankiel and the rest of us to navigate the wordless inner world of personality and willingly, curiously, excitedly, never give up throwing strikes and balls at our World Series jitters. In the tug-of-war between stories, pitching another baseball at overwhelming (addictive, emotionally charged, self or other destructive) challenges facing the people of freedom is a superb metaphor for us all.

"The battle for freedom begins in the land of imagination." Wrestling against gut wrenching hurts, blinded by opaque attitudinal lenses, losing our way, is offered natural navigation through this image land and discovers emotional waves, emotional coordinates, emotional complexes and emotional reflexes in patterns, sequences and cascades of complicated human behavior. Practice offers rewarding confidence and familiarity with how the mind works within territories which were once consuming prisons and discovers gratitude, "gratitude reboots the machine", an intelligent design.

This is a pitcher's paradise. The mind is designed to see through emotional lenses of awe and wonder. Each of us will watch with rapt curiosity as our hero and gladiator strides atop the mound to wrestle his unseen guerrillas again. With classic baby steps we will learn how challenging this Guerrilla Warfare really is -- stuck in a box, tricked and trapped, thrown to the mat once again. The free choice of gratitude restarts the mind/body/spirit machine again. There will be those who cheer rapturously as we share with Rick the responsibility for telling The Story of Freedom.

"Emotional anatomy," as real as Ankiel's sinewy stretch hurtling catapult, challenges Rick Ankiel to find his way through obscure inner obstacles. For millions of dollars, he'll practice his trade, in hopes one more pitch will prove himself free forever from this tortuous pit of catastrophic loneliness. His struggle is ours, with as much at stake. Awesome, important and valuable for the future of freedom from controlling guerrillas, his leadership will prove to our drug addicted nation that "people are the product of freedom", an intelligent design.

Just as chemical, electrobiological and protean cascades function physiologically, in the land of imagination, urgings of powerful emotional waves pound upon familiar emotional coordinates, which shape moods, arousing impulses, images, ideas and stories, provoking attitudes. Blinded by these attitudinal lenses, emotional reflexes force behaviors, actions and words producing memories, convincing ourselves "that's just who I am." Stuck in stubbornly constructed stories of desire for painless personal pleasures, free people need a new language for understanding the strategies of this Guerrilla Warfare. Ankiel willingly steps out on the mound to face another tug of war -- wordless guerrilla wrestling against the story of freedom.

Money may inspire Rick Ankiel to pitch again or it may purchase pardons for the fortunate few, but fans in the land of the free and the brave will receive something far greater. Awesome, important and valuable to the future of freedom, the choices Rick makes, make a difference. Every time Rick Ankiel chooses to pitch another ball, he relives, as do we, his entire physical and emotional anatomy. Gratitude reboots the machine. If it was not designed this simply, we would be doomed. But given the opportunity to pitch one more ball for the future of freedom, what will you choose. Heroes everywhere tell The Story of Freedom.

Generation Wisdom collaborates to describe how the mind works. Very naturally rewarding, small glimpses of freedom beyond the walls of stuck in a box attitudes, discovers awe and wonder before emotional waves come crashing down upon familiar, emotionally charged, coordinates once again. This is guerrilla wrestling. To see it clearly means we can choose wisely from the options available and share our freedom with friends. Thank you is the only logical response.

 

Riggs Bailey Roberts MD
March 15, 2001


new references
February 8, 2002
Generation Wisdom http://www.genW.org

 

Recent quotes by Rick Ankiel Spring 2003
http://www26.brinkster.com/swampie/Archives/Quotes/Ankiel.html

 

©copyright 1991-2003 Gilgamesh Productions, all rights reserved
Riggs Bailey Roberts, MD
"Gratitude reboots the machine"