Today was a pretty big day for me professionally. I won’t go into the details right now, but suffice it to say today was one of my better days at Y!. I had an email conversation about some of the day’s events with my dad, in which he congratulated me on my “grand-slam homerun” (btw, I am eternally grateful for both of my extremely supportive parents), and I think that metaphor resonated with me. Because as I was heading off to bed, the below quotation from the West Wing kept echoing in my head.
I was thinking about how I need to get Sasha to watch the West Wing in the context of our earlier IM conversation about smart people and the fear of failure. Upon reflection, it struck me that Aaron Sorkin really has a knack for capturing the complex demons of insecurity that plague some of those we might expect to be most secure…it is obvious (in both his poignancy and his rap sheet) that he is writing from personal experience. Anyway, the below is a great quotation from a great scene from a great episode of a great show; the pitch in question is “being the smartest kid in the class.” I won’t claim to be the smartest kid in the class, but I do feel a lot of the time that I don’t get all of the ball…so, here’s to more grand-slams and less foul balls!
From “Hartsfield Landing” (Season 3):
LEO: What’s going on?
BARTLET: I don’t know. Toby keeps coming back at me with this… I don’t know. He says I let the pitch go by.
LEO: What pitch?
BARTLET: I soften… I smooth myself out publicly. It’s not a put-on, by the way, I’m honestly folksy.
LEO: Yeah.
BARTLET: Yeah what?
LEO: Yeah… nothing.
BARTLET: You agree with him?
LEO: I don’t think you let the pitch go by.
BARTLET: I don’t.
LEO: I think you foul it off.
mmmmmmmmmmm…seems like a very impersonal response to what we were talking about. And what grand-slam?????? stop being so modest!!!!!!