A late summer night. August, 1990. The southerly breeze was still warm deep into the evening. In the hazy dark distance, navigational buoys blinked their soft greens and reds. The band was cranking. We'd been dancing and stargazing by the seawall. Somewhere in the drift of that evening, as Molly’s ride was leaving, I climbed into the back of her brother-in-law's VW with her, a woman I'd just met, on our way to a house full of her relatives. Something clicked between us that night — I think because she saw me clearly, dreamer and all, and didn't flinch. I was driving a black 1985 Saab 900 Turbo at the time. I'd bought it with 60,000 miles on it and added another 150,000 over the next five years. Eighteen cars later, still the best I’ve ever driven.

Mark Twain once wrote: "Be good, and you will be lonesome." He meant it wryly, as Twain usually did. But there's real poignancy beneath the line. To live by your own lights — to follow what calls you rather than what's expected of you — is to accept a certain amount of being misunderstood. Not necessarily rejected, but not quite legible to everyone around you. Jimmy Buffett heard something in that line and made it his own — wrote a song around it, "That's What Living is to Me," that my old friend G.W. Mix and I used to listen to a lot back in 1988, when we were coaching together and the world felt so full of possibility. I hear something in it, too. Always have.

There is real pressure, in this life, to conform. To make choices that are easily explained at dinner parties and don't raise eyebrows. To follow the well-worn path because it's safer, quieter, and requires less defense. I understand the appeal. I've felt that pressure too. We can bend ourselves to fit some ideal of what we think others need to see in us — and some people spend a lifetime doing exactly that. But it comes at a cost. Something at the core goes quiet. The self that knows what it actually wants gets smaller and smaller until it's hard to hear at all. The alternative is harder in the short run and freer in the long one: seek your own truth, and be faithful to it. Not to earn anyone's respect — that should never be the goal — but because self-respect is only available on those terms. And here's what I've noticed: the people who live that way, who stay true to what calls them, tend to earn the regard of others anyway. Not despite their unconventionality. Because of it. But by then they've stopped keeping score. That's the whole point. It all comes back to being in the process — trusting it, staying in it, letting it be enough.

I've spent a good portion of my life feeling like I operate on a slightly different frequency than many of the people around me. Not better. Not worse. Just different. It's not that my life has looked particularly unconventional from the outside — I've spent most of my career in education, after all. It's more about the approach. The choices I make when nobody's requiring anything of me. How I go about things, and it that my approach is somehow kind of different. The things I care about. The way I move through the world when I'm moving freely. Those don't always make perfect sense to people. Maybe it’s just me? For a long time, it gnawed at me a little. It no longer does. And honestly — I don't think this feeling is as uncommon as it seems. Most of us, at one point or another, have felt that quiet friction between who we are and who the world seems to want us to be. The details differ. The frequency is nearly universal. What matters, I think, is not just that we find the courage to live true to ourselves — but that we extend that same grace to others. That we learn to appreciate people for their own particular frequency, whatever it is. The world gets more interesting, and more humane, when we do.

This week I'm in Colorado visiting my daughter Brett, who is turning another year older. She got her masters in sustainability from CU Boulder a few years ago and stayed — working for a regenerative cattle farm, serving and 2 non-profit boards, living close to the land, close to the mountains, close to what matters to her. She didn't take the easy road. She took the true one. She is, quite possibly, the kindest person I've ever known. Maybe the hardest working too. The right things find people like her.

We're celebrating her birthday, seeing her new apartment, and also heading up to Steamboat Springs to pick up a 34-year-old Saab 900S — Nocturne Blue, five-speed manual, whale tail spoiler, and an original cassette player that was sent out for full service before being reinstalled. She's been sleeping in a Colorado garage under double covers since 2003, owned by a 74-year-old aviator and motorcyclist with a deep sense of nostalgia, a love of well-designed machines that move fast, and a golden retriever named Hanna. He spent four years searching for exactly this car, loved her for decades, and when the time came to let her go, needed to know she was going to the right person. I'd like to think I made that case when we spoke on the phone, about 20 minutes after the listing hit my inbox. I’ve always loved Saabs for their driver-centric design and their iconoclastic culture. They challenged the status quo, a brilliant example of when the designers and engineers, not the beancounters, got to run the show.

There's something about this that feels less like a decision and more like a continuation. I was driving a black Saab Turbo when that warm August night in 1990 set something in motion. I'm driving a Nocturne Blue 900S home now. And somewhere in between, a little girl with a big heart and rock solid values grew up and moved to Colorado — and it's her hands helping load this one onto the trailer. The years keep moving, the cars keep changing hands, but apparently I'm still the guy who thinks it's perfectly reasonable to do this on a Sunday morning in June, 1,500 miles from home with a daughter who’s all grown up and far away.

In a few weeks, an old pal and I are driving her home to Marion — north into the Rockies, then, TBD . . . Roads less traveled, hopefully. The kind of trip that makes complete sense to exactly the right kind of people. The cassette player works, as does the 150-watt stereo. I'm accepting cassette donations (or loaners). Or gas money . . . Bonus points for old mixtapes. All contributors will receive a shoutout somewhere between the Rockies and Buzzards Bay. Send to: Pete Bidstrup, 306 Front St., Marion, MA 02738.

The point of life, as best I can tell, is not to live it in a way that requires the least explanation. The people who have loved me most — really loved me — have loved me for the parts that are hardest to explain. The stargazing. The spontaneous pile into the back seat. The Saabs. The unorthodox approach. To be misunderstood by some is often the price of being truly known by a few. I'll take that trade every time.

— Pete

P.S. Jimmy Buffett died in September 2023. He was 76 and had been performing until nearly the end. He lived exactly as he wanted, on his own terms, without apology — and the world loved him for it. If you want to spend a few minutes with a beautiful piece of writing that celebrates the life he lived, this one is worth your time.

Notes arrive on Sundays and some Wednesdays

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About me, and Practice Notes → here
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About my book, The Why of Sports → here

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