It’s that time of year when college baseball teams, whose home fields reside in northern climates, head south to play in the sunshine. Play is important in life. Recently, a bus from a small community college in Iowa, taking 33 young men to play in the sunshine of Arkansas, left the road and rolled. Many of the young men received injuries of varying severity, and one tragically died at the scene.

The young man that died was from Rapid City. Although I didn’t know him, like you, I have known and know young men like him. 19-years-old…just beginning to write the next chapter of their life. The chapter where they meet the friends they’ll have for the rest of their life, the chapter where they meet the love of their life, the chapter where they begin to discover their purpose. The chapter that sets the stage for all the chapters to come.

Telos is an ancient Greek word meaning “purpose”, and the philosopher Aristotle argued that everything and everyone has a telos. A “something” that when fulfilled represents the highest good of that thing or the flourishing of that person. The telos of a knife is to cut, and the highest good of a knife is to cut well. We’ve all experienced knives that fall short of their highest good. The knives that we stop reaching for that gradually work their way to the bottom of the drawer. So it goes.

The world seems to continually thunder about between order and chaos, rarely pausing for long in one realm or the other. Despite our best efforts and intentions, randomness seems to rule supreme. Random acts of kindness, random acts of violence, random incidents and accidents that beg the question, “Why?”

If only, like a visit to the eye doctor, could we simply look out at the world around us and dial in our vision, “good…good…better…better…” until all is clear, until all that is, is all that it could be.

That young man doesn’t get the opportunity to reach his highest good, to fully flourish in life, and for that I am sad. My sadness doesn’t change anything for his loved ones. It doesn’t erase the scene his teammates and coaches will see forever more. What does it do? What is the telos of this tragedy? A heightened sense of gratitude for life?

It has been calculated, by those that enjoy calculating, that the estimated statistical probability for the existence of each of us is 1 in 400 trillion…400,000,000,000,000. Those who enjoy calculating, figure it would take about 126,000 years to count to 400 trillion. As someone less than fond of calculating number type stuff, I’ll take their word for it.

Each of us, just by simply existing, has won a very improbable lottery. Each of us has won an opportunity to actively or passively oscillate somewhere between who we are and who we could be. Each of us a knife in a jumbled drawer that someone, sometime, may need to reach for.

While the sun is shining…while you cast a shadow…play.