Christian Sheppard is able to show the way to a life of meaning, purpose, and happiness with the release of his new book, The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball: Lessons for Life from Homer’s ODYSSEY to the World Series.
X: https://x.com/cs_sheppard/status/1877401202146644282
As the title suggests, how does Mr. Sheppard show the reader the path to true happiness? Through baseball, Homer’s Odyssey, and his own introspection as someone raised a devout Roman Catholic. “When seeing is no longer believing and emotion defies expression, it may be better (before trying to say what it all means) to revisit, if only to savor, what actually happened,” he writes in a key passage in the book, under a chapter titled Extra Inning: Happiness. “The 2016 Chicago Cubs, after leading Major League Baseball in wins from Opening Day until the close of the regular season, after defeating the Giants in a five-game series and Los Angeles in seven, won the National League Pennant… This is the word most used to describe the Cubs’ World Series win. Epic…
In his Poetics, Aristotle describes an epic as a long narrative. ‘Epic’ might just mean long. (It certainly seemed like a long time since the Cubs won the Pennant, like an eternity since they clinched the Division.) Yet when you see the stories the philosophers are talking about, you realize that epics encompass everything. Epics are religious, not just because they depict gods and heroes, but in the root sense of the word. ‘Religion’ is from Latin ‘re-ligare,’ meaning to relink together. (It is the same ligare as in ‘ligament,’ as in Kyle Schwarber tore a ligament in his knee during the third game of the regular season yet was able to come back to play in the World Series.) Epics connect seemingly disparate elements into a meaningful whole and so offer a vision of the world.”
In the spirit of aforementioned quote, Sheppard is able to show by personal example his vision of the world, and in the process what constitutes a meaningful life. For him, simply put: “After my family and I return home from the parade, I turn on the TV, still happily asking, what does it mean? The best answer I hear comes from an old grandmother conducting her entire clan of blue-clad Cubs fans, her children and her grandchildren, from the parade.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Wisdom-Baseball-Lessons-Odyssey/dp/B0DHHK19S6
When asked the question, she bursts out in both laughter and in tears: ‘What does it mean? It means everything. Que significa todo el mundo para mi. It means the world to me.’” Such a concept seems somewhat similar in ideological root to Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy, in effect the search for meaning being a quintessential part of the human condition. Where Sheppard’s profound philosophy compliments such a masterwork principle is that finding aforementioned meaning is relative. It’s subjective. And by really understanding that, in his case embracing his love of the Chicago Cubs as a grounding force, one can find purpose and meaning in their lives. Maybe even the statistically overrated sense of that thing called happiness.
Job well done Mr. Sheppard. I never thought a book could have so beautifully married so many seemingly different things.
Garth Thomas