We all accumulate mirrors - ways of seeing ourselves, ways of being aware of what we're actually like at any given moment. I got a glimpse of myself in one of my favorites just lately, by playing the game I've always played.

I've been swinging bats at balls for over a third of a century, and I went back to a place where I've played ball for most of the last ten years. Casual, beer-drinking coed slow-pitch. Though I went with people with whom I'd never played, I recognized some of the people I saw there as having spent some of the last decade in the same way. It was comforting to see them - everybody's got to do something, and it's nice to know my choice is not uniquely bizarre. It was comforting in general to be playing ball again.

I just know how I'm supposed to be when I'm on the diamond. Not necessarily brilliant in any sense, but I know what aspects of my play will be noteworthy, for good or ill. I get to use knowledge I learned as a child - rare for me, as I work in a profession where much of what you learned as the new best truth three years ago is useless. I know what stance is effective for me, and know as the ball leaves the bat on which base I should be standing when time is called.

Each game, especially the first one in each year, is a chance for me to check myself, a full length mirror on my physical and mental state. Can I still get to third on that ball I just hit? Do I still move correctly towards where the opponent's hit will go, based on how their shoulders and hips move as the pitch comes in? Are my feet set right to pick up the throw that's coming my way? Am I still focusing well enough to at least realize what I should be doing at all times?

(For the record, it seems I'm doing all right at the moment.)

I sometimes get looks from people who don't realize what I'm doing, just like I might get looks from fellow pedestrians who don't realize the storefront window is getting a wry look because of reflected hairstyle rather than displayed merchandise. Some seem to think that I'm expending far more effort than the game deserves, and I'd have to agree with that.

The expenditure is for the chance to see myself achieve the results I expect for the effort. That's far too rare a chance these days, it seems, and always a chance worth taking.

Even the next day, it's good to be abraded from the kinds of dives I knew I'd take, sore from the muscles I knew I'd strain. I prefer feeling those aches to the ache of knowing I avoided the dives, spared the muscles. Having looked in that mirror before and seen myself not even trying, I know how distasteful I'd look to myself if I was unmarked by the game while letting chances go by. I don't go out to get hurt, but it's no shame to get hurt, and it's some compensation to know that I did get the extra base on that hit, I did make the tough out, about as often as I should have.

Someday I'll be brave enough to seek that kind of reflection in my work and in my family, looking into those bigger facets of my life in the way I look at my time on the diamond. I've always suspected I'd have a better attitude about being hurt, and about the base hits and foul tips that inevitably come, if I did.

Perhaps that's the way I'll get back my focus.