A longtime friend of mine committed suicide. He took his nine month old son with him. The news has finally broken in the local news outlets (link purposefully omitted) and I’ve been reading some of the comments. The story itself in how it depicts my friend, and the things people say about him based on a single newspaper article, is leaving me distraught. There is a lot you can say about my friend from a distance, and I can understand why people would feel the way they feel.

For me there is nothing but darkness. There is nothing I can say, no one I can blame, and nothing I can do that will right this tragedy. What was, I know to be, a toxic relationship between my friend and the mother of his child turned out as horribly as I can imagine. We all failed him and his son.

This whole episode has me thinking a lot about the value of life. How precious that improbable gift is. It is heartbreaking that my friend never lived past 25 and his son past 9 months. I don’t believe in an afterlife or a higher being. I just believe in what we have now, and all we have is ourselves and each other.

In the opening words of Richard Dawkins book Unweaving the Rainbow, he says:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

Regardless of what you might say about how he and his son died, it weighs heavy in my heart that my friend won the cosmic lottery—in simply being born—and threw it all away. All of us living have won that same lottery; we should all celebrate it every single day. Stephen and Wyatt, you will be missed.

The other day a friend of mine asked me a somewhat startling question—what is your favorite place on the planet. It was startling in the sense that the question come from the blue; completely out of nowhere. However startling the question, my answer (once I had regained composure and evaluated this somewhat unusual question) was easy: Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California.

I’ve been to Dodger Stadium countless times through the years, but considering I grew up at least an hour and a half drive from the park regular trips were impossible in my youth. And to be completely honest, baseball had taken a backseat to my interests in High School (an obsession with underground music that has since waned considerably and a fascination with web design that sticks with me to this day).

After graduating college and getting established in my career with a regular job, I found myself becoming drawn back into my love for America’s pastime and especially the Dodgers. When my grandfather grew (what would turn out to be) terminally ill in 2007 I thought about him quite a bit and one thing that sticks with me is the memories of going to my grandfathers house after school, doing schoolwork with him and then settling in for a Dodgers game on TV.

Those are my most fond memories with my grandfather. Sitting in an oversized reclining chair and listening to Vin Scully—the irreplaceable Dodgers broadcaster for the past 61 years—and eagerly waiting on the grill to get sufficiently warmed up so we could put on some burgers.

When my grandfather eventually passed April 1st, 2009 I always drew comfort from turning on the game and hearing Vin utter those words that Dodgers fans eagerly await every day: “It’s time for Dodgers baseball!” Vin, especially, reminds me of the days with my grandfather. His voice always says to brings me back to the best days of my life.

So this year I’ve attended the most number of games in a single baseball season I’ve ever in my entire life. Five so far with at least two more planned. It’s not season tickets, but when you’re an hour and a half away from the stadium that’s about as good as it gets. And when the bottom of the eighth inning drops, “Don’t Stop Believing” hits, and the crowd is going wild with Jameson Moss and Duece are doing their thing I’m never happier.

When the crowd finally settles in for the game and things quiet down—if only for a few moments—I think of my grandfather and those good ol’ days.

“If you’re a designer and you’ll ever be looking for a new job in your life, you should read this.” Some really good advice here.

Now that’s something to think about.