What Are We Doing With the Life We Still Have?

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Okay, everybody. Welcome to Still Here, Still Trying with your host, Mike Baker. Before Mike gets all thoughtful about Memorial Day family and the meaning of life, we need to address the real headline from this weekend. Mike played goalie in a hockey tournament on two teams because apparently one team was too reasonable. This man is out here acting like he is still 27 while his needs are filing formal complaints with management. And poor Kellie has to hear the aftermath.

Every stare becomes a full dramatic production. Step one, groan, step two, bigger groan, step three. I’m fine, like anybody believes that. Sure, buddy. Meanwhile, Kellie is over there thinking, I could fix those knees if this jackass would stop whining and get on the reformer. He is right. Very right. Mike should listen to Kellie more. The woman knows a lot. That is not medical advice, that is marriage advice. But here’s the annoying part. He actually played great.

The old man Annette had himself a weekend. Great teams in front of him. Jacob flying around the ice. Girls he has watched grow up now playing as young women and heading off to school. The tournament raising money for the inland Northwest Girls Hockey Foundation. But somehow, despite the scares, the soreness, and the questionable life choices, Mike played some of his best hockey in a long time. It was a fun weekend with a bunch of great people, right, Vinny?

Great guy. So take a breath. Loosen your shoulders. And if your knees made a noise in solidarity, Mike sees you. This episode starts at the rink, but it does not stay there. It moves through Memorial Day, family service, missing the people we love, watching everybody grow up, and asking what we are doing with the life still in our hands. Here’s Mike Baker with What Are We Doing With the Life We Still Have? Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to Still Here, Still Trying.

I’m Mike Baker, and as always, I am so glad that you’re here. Hey, last week was episode 50, and that one had some weight to it for sure. I hope you enjoyed it. I talked about the middle having to move. I talked about public life and leadership and healthcare and women’s health and politics, and the cost of letting the loudest voices keep running the room. Well, that episode definitely came from a place of frustration, but also a place of hope. I still believe that decent people matter.

I still believe character matters. I still believe that we have a responsibility to speak, to serve, and stay human in a world that keeps rewarding the opposite. But guess what? This week feels different. This week I want to stay in that same human place, but I want to come at it from a different place. Episode 50 was about civic responsibility, and this one is just about living in responsibility. It’s about Memorial Day, hockey, family, grief, joy, and this question that has been sitting with me all weekend.

What are we doing with the life that we still have? That question landed hard for me because I had one of those weekends that just remind you that you’re alive. It was an amazing weekend. I played in a tournament for the Inland Northwest Girls Hockey Foundation, and this one is just always a blast. I played on two teams again because apparently my brain still thinks I’m 27, and my knees were definitely not factored into that equation. Um this was a fundraiser, which already made it meaningful because anytime people show up to support girls hockey, that matters to me.

But this weekend carried more than hockey. It had community in it, it had time in it, it had memory in it. And guess what? It had my son on the ice with me. It had girls that we’ve been watching grow up stepping out there as young women, getting ready to head off to school, carrying the game and the community with them into whatever comes next. And yeah, a bunch of them scored on me, and it just made me smile. And somehow, against all medical logic and common sense, I actually had a great weekend in net.

That was fun. I had amazing teams in front of me. They battled, they batchecked, they picked me up, and they made me look way better than it probably deserved. For a couple days, I felt like this old man in Net still had another gear, and it was just fun to see it. I actually played the best hockey I played in a very long time, and damn, it was so much fun. That part matters too, because sometimes I think we get weird about joy. We apologize for it, we shrink it, we act like we should only talk about the heavy things because the world is heavy.

And look, the world is heavy. I’m not ignoring that, but there is something just absolutely holy about a weekend where your body hurts because you used it for something that you loved, where your friends are laughing, where your kid is flying around the ice, where young people are growing up right in front of you, where the whole rink feels like a little community that’s just holding itself together with cold air, jello shots, hockey bags, and people who care.

And then Memorial Day lands on top of that. And suddenly those ordinary things just don’t feel ordinary anymore. The sore legs, the drive home, the laughter, the chance to play with your son, the chance to watch kids grow up, the chance to miss your mom because loving her still matters. The chance to thank your dad for serving, the chance to think about your grandpas who fully served in those wars and thankfully came home. Some families got that mercy, and some didn’t.

And that’s where Memorial Day meets real life for me this year. I don’t think that Memorial Day is asking us to be miserable. I don’t believe that the people we honor would want us to spend the whole weekend afraid to laugh, afraid to play, afraid to gather, afraid to enjoy the life still in front of us. But I do think that remembrance asks something of our joy. It asks us not to treat it like it was cheap. The life we get to live came at a cost that somebody else’s family still feels.

So this week I want to talk about that. I want to talk about what it means to be alive and actually notice it. I want to talk about kids growing up, parents learning how to let go, missing people who are gone, honoring people who serve, remembering the people who didn’t get home, and refusing to sleepwalk through the life still in our hands. Before we get into it, quick housekeeping. I know you’ve been waiting for this too. If this podcast means something to you, please follow it on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, podcasts, anywhere that you’re listening to it, you’re listening to it now.

So just hit that follow button. Please share it with someone who needs a human conversation this week. Please leave a review if you’re listening somewhere that allows it. That helps more than you know. Look, there’s no giant machine behind this show. It’s me, this microphone, these stories, these songs, and a stubborn belief that honest conversations still matter. So let’s talk about Memorial Day. Let’s talk about hockey, let’s talk about family, let’s talk about what we do with the life that we still have.

It’s gonna be a great episode. Well, there’s something about a hockey tournament weekend that makes adults act like teenagers again, and honestly, I love that. You take people with jobs, mortgages, bad backs, kids, calendars, bills, inboxes, and actual responsibilities. And then you put them in a rink with a puck and a scoreboard and referees, and suddenly everyone is emotionally invested like civilization depends on whether we clear the zone. People who lead teams at work and manage households and make serious decisions all week suddenly start chirping each other like we’re 16 years old trying to impress someone in the stands.

The gear smells terrible, the schedule is always a little chaotic. Somebody is always looking for tape, somebody always forgot something. Somebody says they’re going to take it easy, and then they play like the Stanley Cup is hiding in the lobby. The body starts sending warning signals early, and everyone pretends not to hear those signals. I’m included in that, and that is part of the magic. This weekend had all of that. It had the rink smell, which is both horrible and comforting if you’re a hockey person.

It had the energy of people bouncing between games, it had adults laughing, stretching things they should have stretched 20 years ago, taping sticks, telling stories, sweating through gear that should honestly be handled by professionals in protective suits, and acting like we all had one more level that we could reach if our hips just cooperated. And underneath all of that, it had purpose. Look, the tournament was a fundraiser for the Inland Northwest Girls Hockey Foundation.

And that matters. It matters because girls in hockey deserve more ice, more opportunity, more support, more visibility, and more people saying, you belong here. They deserve to grow up in a sport where they are not treated like guests. They deserve a community that shows up for them and makes room for them, not as an afterthought, but as part of the future of the game. And that is what made the weekend feel bigger than the scores. Yeah, we wanted to win.

Of course we did. Anyone who tells you that they are only out there for fun is either lying or hasn’t been tied in the third period with two minutes left. It’s intense. The competitive part still wakes up. That little ridiculous fire is still in there. But this weekend also had something bigger underneath it. We were playing for a foundation that is helping girls grow in the sport. We were raising money. We were showing up for a community, and we were creating one of those weekends that kids remember even when they don’t yet know that they’re going to remember it.

And I got to be a part of it in that, which still feels like home to me. Goalie is a weird position. I know that you voluntarily stand in front of hard rubber flying at you, and when things go badly, there’s a red light, the score changes behind you, and it’s just announcing it to the building, but you failed. It’s not a normal hobby for a grown adult with responsibilities and joints that have filed multiple complaints. But I love it. I just love it.

There is something about being in net that just clears my head. When I’m on the ice, everything gets simple. Read the play, find the puck, trust your feet. Remember your angles. Trust your hands, trust the people in front of you. Reset after the goal. Don’t get too cocky after a save. Don’t get mad after one gets past you. Just stay in it. And honestly, that is not a terrible life lesson. This weekend I felt that again in a way that I haven’t felt in a while.

I had amazing teens in front of me. They worked, they battled, they came back hard, they cleared rebounds, they gave me lanes to see the pocket, they made plays, and they laughed. And they made me feel like we were all carrying the game together. And man, I played well. I say it because it’s true, and because sometimes part of being grateful is just letting yourself admit when something felt good. I played the best hockey I played in a very long time.

I felt sharp, I felt present, I felt like my body for just a couple of days remembered something before my brain had time to overthink it. Look, I was the old man in net, and that bar’s pretty low. And the old but this old man just had an insane weekend, and that was so much fun. There, there’s a kind of joy that comes from finding out some part of you still has another gear, and it was just beautiful. But it’s not because you need to needed to prove anything to anybody, and not because anyone is handing out trophies for middle-aged stubbornness.

It feels good because it reminds you that there is still life in there. There’s still play in there. There’s still something that wakes up when you are doing a thing that you love with people that you love. And that is so easy to lose. Look, work gets heavy, life gets full, our bodies change, the calendar fills up. You start becoming the person who says, I’d love to, but I’m busy, until one day you realize that you’ve become busy with everything except the things that make you feel alive.

And this weekend pushed back against that. It reminded me that joy is not a side issue, it it is part of a life worth living. It reminded me that community is built in these small, sweaty, funny, imperfect places where people show up for something bigger than themselves. And it reminded me that my body is still capable of giving something back, even if it also reminded me later with interest. And maybe that is why this weekend connected so deeply with Memorial Day for me.

Because the life we are remembering, the life people fought for, the life that people gave up, is made out of weekends like this. It’s not only made out of speeches and flags and ceremonies, though those absolutely have their place. It’s made out of ordinary freedom. The freedom to play, the freedom to gather, the freedom to watch kids grow, the freedom to raise money for something good, the freedom to drive home tired and sore and grateful, because you got to spend a weekend fully inside your own life.

And that is not small. I think that is sacred in the most ordinary way. One of the parts of the weekend that hit me harder than I expected was this feeling that everybody is just growing up at the same time. My own kids, the girls from the rink, the kids we’ve watched carry giant hockey bags through cold lobbies for years. The ones who used to look small inside that gear, the ones whose parents needed to give them rides and reminders and tape and snacks, help finding a glove, help finding the right door, help figuring out where they fit.

And then somehow you blink and they’re not little anymore. Jacob is grown now. Cameron is out in the world building his own life. Samantha is in is her own person carrying strength, pain, humor, and all the complexity that comes with being an adult. That is such a strange sentence to say as a parent. Your kids become adults, and part of you accepts it because obviously time keeps moving, but another part of you still sees them at every age at once.

And you rem you remember the little kid version. You remember the awkward version, you remember the brave version, you remember the hard days, the funny days, the days that you wished you handled differently, the days that made you proud, the nights you were exhausted, the mornings you were late, the moments you thought you were messing everything up, and the moments where you looked at them and thought, How did I get lucky enough to be your dad? Parenting is strange because for years you’re buried in logistics.

Rides and practices and dinners and homework and bills and appointments and late nights and early mornings and money and worry and laundry and gear and school and friends and heart rapes and small victories, big feelings, and the constant quiet question of whether you are doing any of it right. And then one day you look up and they are not little anymore. They are adults, and somehow you are still standing there holding all the memories at once. That is what the rink did to me this weekend.

It put all of that in one place. A bunch of the girls that we’ve watched over the years are 18 now, and they played with us in the tournament, and it and it just made us all look bad. They are so good at hockey. They were out there laughing on the bench, they are out there competing hard, and honestly, they are chirping like they have been in beer league for 20 years. They’re heading off to school, and they are just not little girls around the rink anymore.

They are young women stepping into whatever comes next, and we’re so proud of them. If you’ve been around a sport long enough, you know how fast it goes. One year they’re learning where to stand, and then you blink and they’re making plays, laughing on the bench, and talking about the next chapter like it has always been waiting for them. And there’s pride in that, there’s joy in that. And I think there’s probably also a little ache in that for all of us.

Because you want them to grow, of course you do. You want them to leave home in the healthy way, and you want them to find their people and build their lives and test themselves and learn what they’re made of, and hopefully they carry forward all of the good things that the community gave them. But there is still something tender about realizing that just that a chapter mattered, and that nobody gets to stay in it forever. So when they score on me, I just smile.

And I hope that I have been a small part of their life, because I’m so proud of them all. And that is what growing up does. It makes you proud and breaks your heart a little at the same time. And this tournament felt like more than hockey because of that. Yeah, it was a fundraiser. Yes, it was a great weekend of games. Yes, it was adults acting like goofy teenagers, laughing in the rink and pretending that our bodies were totally fine. But underneath all of that, it was a picture of what community is supposed to do.

A community is supposed to help kids grow up with people around them. It gives them places to belong. It gives them adults who cheer for them, challenge them, laugh with them, and make room for them. It tells them that they matter before they head into a world that will not always say that very clearly. And that’s what hockey has done for a lot of these kids. It gave them teammates, it gave them confidence, it gave them memories, it gave them a rink full of people who got to watch them become themselves.

And this weekend we got to share the ice with them as they step into whatever comes next, and that is a gift. It also made Memorial Day land different for me. Watching this these kids grow up is one of those ordinary miracles that we act like we are guaranteed. We assume that we will get every chapter, every graduation, every drive home, every late night story, every tournament weekend. Every chance to look across the ice and realize the little kid you remember is now an adult with a whole life opening in front of them.

But we are not guaranteed every chapter. Some people don’t come home. Some kids don’t come home. Some parents don’t get to watch their kids grow up. Some kids grow up with stories instead of a person. Some families carry an empty chair through every holiday, every milestone, every ordinary day that the rest of us rush through. So when I watched those girls play, when I watched Jacob skate, when I saw Kellie smile in the stands, and saw her face when I gave her a sweaty, stinky hockey kiss, and when I thought about my own kids and how fast it all goes, I felt this deep gratitude and a little ache sitting right next to each other.

And that might be what love feels like when you’re paying attention. You’re proud, you’re happy, you’re laughing, you’re also tired and sore, and you’re wondering how everybody else grew up so fast. And somewhere inside of all of that, you realize that this is the life. This is the thing that we were always trying to get back to community, family, kids growing into themselves, parents learning how to let go, adults getting one more weekend of play, and people showing up for something bigger than themselves.

That is not small, that is the life that’s still in our hands. Well, playing with Jacob was one of the best parts of the weekend. And I need to say this plainly, like, he’s really good. Like, really, really good. He has so much energy. He’s up and down the reek, he’s booming back and forth, he’s making plays, he’s just doing the thing. And there’s just a joy in watching your kid do something well that’s hard to hard to explain without send it sounding like every dad who has ever stood at the glass and thought his kid should be scouted immediately.

But this was not that. I wasn’t watching him as a little boy from the stands. Jacob started playing hockey later in life. I It was playing with him, and I’ve been able to play in tournaments with him, it’s always fun. But this weekend I was sharing the ice with him. I got to see him make plays and move and compete and laugh and be fully himself inside a game that we just both love. And that does something to you as a parent. There’s this strange and beautiful moment when your kid becomes someone that you don’t only protect or teach anymore.

You get to admire them, you get to play beside them. You get to travel to see them in different countries. You get to watch your daughter graduate. You get to look across the ice and think, man, I just I love who you are becoming. And that is one of the gifts that I don’t want to rush past. Because when kids are little, you spend so much time guiding them. You teach them and you correct them and protect them and feed them and remind them and help them and you worry about them.

And you try to just keep them from doing anything too dumb while also remembering that you did plenty of dumb things yourself. And then they grow up and their relationship changes. They still need you, but in a different way. They become adults with their own strength, their own humor, their own stories, their own courage, and their own stubbornness. And sometimes you get a weekend where you are on the ice together and it just hits you. I got to play hockey with my son.

That’s a full sentence. And that is enough. I don’t want to treat that like an ordinary thing, even if it happened in the middle of a loud, sweaty tournament with bad smells and sore legs. Some gifts just arrive dressed like normal weekends. And that doesn’t make them smaller, it just makes them easier to miss. And I missed my mom this weekend too. It’s that kind of missing that sneaks into good days sometimes. It doesn’t always show up as sadness at first.

Sometimes it shows up because you want to call her. You want to tell her, Mom, you should have seen Jake out there. You want to tell her, like, this old man still had a little magic in net. She would have laughed and smiled. You want her to laugh with you and be proud with you and make the whole thing feel even more complete. And grief is strange that way. It doesn’t only live in dark rooms. It doesn’t only show up on anniversaries or holidays or in the moments that we expect.

Sometimes it shows up right in the middle of joy, because joy wants to be shared. A good day makes you miss the person who would have understood why it was good. And I think that is one of the cruel and beautiful things about love. When someone is gone, you don’t only miss them when life hurts. You miss them when life is good. You miss them when funny things happen. You miss them when your kid does something amazing. You miss them when you have news.

You miss them when you drive home tired and happy. And you’re and your hand almost reaches for the phone before your heart remembers. This weekend had some of that in it for me. And not in a way that ruined it, more in a way that just made it deeper. My mom wasn’t there, but loving her was. Missing her was, wanting to tell her was. The ache sat next to the joy, and somehow both of them just belonged. And maybe that is part of what it means to just keep living after loss.

You don’t leave missing behind, you carry it into the good days. And over time, if you’re lucky, the missing becomes part of how you recognize that something matters. And that connects to memor to Memorial Day for me. Memorial Day is obviously different. It’s about honoring the men and women who died in military service. It’s about families who lost someone in a way that changed their lives forever. But grief has a way of teaching us to understand absence.

It teaches us that a chair can be empty and full at the same time. Empty because the person is gone, but full because love still sits there. And this weekend reminded me of that. Watching Jacob play, thinking about my own kids, again, seeing those girls grow up, missing my mom, feeling the ache and the joy together, all of it just made me feel how fragile and beautiful ordinary life is. And I think that is why we have to pay attention to it. Good days are not less meaningful because they have sadness in them.

They might be more meaningful because of it. They remind us that life is not clean. It is not all joy or all grief. It’s actually both of those things sitting together in the same bleachers, in the same locker room, in the same car on the drive home. The good days carry the missing two. And maybe that is why we have to notice them while they are still happy. Memorial Day also makes me think about my dad and my grandpa’s. My dad served, and I am grateful for that.

I want to say that clearly. I’m grateful for his service. I’m grateful for what that means, not only as a sentence we say, but as part of our family’s story. Service shapes people. It shapes families. It asks something of a person, and it asks something of the people that who love them. My grandpa served in wars, and we were lucky. They came home. That sentence feels heavier the older I get. They came home. When you’re younger, you know that matters, but I don’t know that you feel the full weight of it.

As you get older, as you have kids, as you lose people, as you understand how easily life changes, that phrase becomes more than family history. It becomes almost a mercy. They came home. They got to keep living. They got to have families. They got to sit at tables. They got to become part of stories that kept going. And so many families did not get to say that. So many families had a chair that stayed empty. So many kids grew up with a story instead of a person.

So many spouses, parents, siblings, and friends carried grief that the rest of the country remembers once a year while they live with it every day. And that is the heart of Memorial Day. It’s not only a long weekend, it’s not only the unofficial start of the summer. It’s not only a day for sales and barbecues and leak trips and hockey tournaments, or just getting the yard cleaned up. I’m not saying those things are bad. I don’t think that honoring sacrifice requires us to reject joy.

But Memorial Day asks us to remember that some people gave up every ordinary thing that we are still able to do. They gave up mornings, they gave up dinners, they gave up birthdays, and they gave up the chance to watch their kids grow up. They gave up the chance to get older, complain about sore knees, play one more game, call their mom, hug their kid, sit in the quiet after a full day, or drive home tired and grateful. That is what hit me this weekend.

The sacrifice that we honor is not abstract. It’s made of all of the life that someone didn’t get to finish. And that makes the ordinary things just feel different. A hockey tournament, a sun on the ice, girls growing up, a dad who served, grandpas who came home, and a mother I wish I could call. A body that still let me play. Teams that made me feel alive, and a community that showed up for girls in the sport. All of that is ordinary life. All of that is exactly what some people never got to come back to.

I don’t think Memorial Day asks us to be miserable. I don’t think the people that we honor would want us to spend the whole weekend afraid to laugh, afraid to play, afraid to gather, afraid to enjoy the life that’s is still in front of us. But I do think that remembrance asks something of our joy. It asks us to receive joy with humility. It asks us to not treat the gift of life like it was cheap. Because there’s a difference between enjoying life and sleepwalking through it.

There’s a difference between gathering with gratitude and gathering without memory. There is a difference between laughing with people you love and acting like none of this ever cost anybody anything. That is where I want to live this week. Not in guilt. Guilt’s rarely useful for very long. I want to live in gratitude that changes how I pay attention. I want to be the kind of person who enjoys the weekend and remembers the cost. I want to play the game and honor the people who didn’t get to keep playing theirs.

And I want to thank my dad for certain. I want to be grateful that my grandpas came home. I want to hold space for the families whose people did not. And I want to look at my kids and look at the kids from the rink and look at my community and remember that this ordinary life is just not small. The best way to honor sacrifice is not to perform sadness for a day. It’s to live with more intention, more gratitude, more service, and more love after the day is over.

And that is the Memorial Day lesson that I’m carrying this year. Well, the thing that I kept feeling this weekend was how easy it is to just miss your own life while you’re standing right in the middle of it. And that sounds strange, but I think we do it all the time. We get used to being tired, stressed, busy, distracted, irritated, behind, overcommitted, and half present. I think sometimes people feel like there’s a badge of honor there somehow.

We move from one thing to the next, we answer the email, we get through the meeting, we drive to the game, we check the phone, we carry the stress, we worry about tomorrow while today is still happening. And we tell ourselves that we’ll slow down later, notice later, enjoy it later, breathe later, and then later becomes a memory, and we can be surrounded by something beautiful and still not fully receive it. We can be at the rink with people we love, watching kids we’ve known for years step into adulthood, playing beside our own kids, raising money for something good, missing the people that we wish were still here.

And part of us still wants to rush ahead to the next obligation. I don’t want to do that as much anymore. I don’t want to waste the life that’s still in my hands. I don’t want to sleepwalk through the gifts and only recognize them later when they’re gone. I don’t want to be too busy building, fixing, leading, worrying, and surviving that I forget to enjoy the moments that make all of that work worth doing. And that doesn’t mean I want to ignore the hard stuff.

Life is heavy, work matters, I get it, responsibility matters, grief is real, stress is real, bills are real. The world is still loud and messy and full of things that need people to care. But I think we have to be careful. Because sometimes the heaviness tricks us into thinking that joy is irresponsible. Sometimes stress convinces us that presence is optional. Sometimes grief makes us afraid to love the moment because we know that the moments don’t last.

But maybe that is exactly why we should love them. Maybe Memorial Day is not asking whether we felt sad enough. Maybe the better question is whether we are living with enough intention now. Are we loving people out loud while they are still here to hear it? Are we using our voice for something better than the noise? Are we showing up for our community instead of only complaining about it? It’s one of my favorite ones. Are we making time for the things that make us feel alive?

Are we paying attention while our kids are becoming adults right in front of us? Are we letting joy soften us instead of letting stress harden everything? Those questions stay with me, and I hope they’ll stay with you. Because I know how easy it is to just keep moving. I know how easy it is to tell yourself you’ll call later, you’ll write the note later, you’ll take the picture later, you’ll say the thing later, you’ll play the game later, you’ll spend the time later, you’ll forgive later, you’ll rest later, you’ll live later.

But later is not guaranteed. That’s not meant to scare us, it’s meant to wake us up. The life still in our hands deserves more attention than autopilot. It deserves presence. It deserves gratitude. It deserves a little more courage. It deserves the kind of love that actually says the thing instead of assuming that people know. It deserves the kind of joy that is willing to be felt before it’s gone. And this week weekend gave me that reminder in a way that I needed.

Look, I’m gonna say it again. I got to play hockey with my son. I got this to watch girls from the rink step into adulthood. I got to miss my mom because she still matters to every good thing that I want to tell her. I got to think about my dad and my grandpas and feel gratitude for the ones who came home. And I got to remember the families who didn’t get that. I got to play hard, to laugh loud, to feel sore, to feel proud, feel thankful, and just feel alive.

And that’s a lot for one weekend, and I don’t want to rush past it, and I hope that you don’t rush past it either. I don’t want you to rush past your version of whatever it was that made you find joy. Maybe your version isn’t hockey, although I’m gonna question your choices. But maybe it’s sitting on the porch with someone that you love, maybe it’s watching your kid graduate, maybe it’s a phone call that you keep putting off. Maybe it’s just a walk that you need to take.

Maybe it’s maybe it’s a family story that you need to ask about before nobody is left to tell it. Maybe it’s forgiving someone because carrying the anger has started to cost too much. Maybe it’s just letting yourself laugh again without feeling guilty. Whatever it is, pay attention. We honor the people who didn’t get to finish their lives by refusing to sleepwalk through ours. And that is the sentence that I just keep coming back to. We honor them by living awake.

We honor them by loving people while we have them. We honor them by serving something bigger than ourselves. And we honor them by building communities that give kids a place to grow. We honor them by showing up for the fundraisers, the teens, the families, the neighbors, the hard conversations, and the ordinary days. We honor them by taking the life still in our hands seriously enough to enjoy it. And that is the responsibility of joy. It’s joy with memory, it’s joy with gratitude, it’s joy with service, it’s joy that knows the cost and still receives the gift.

And that’s what I want to carry forward from this weekend. So this week, I’m not asking you to feel guilty for enjoying your life. I’m asking you to enjoy it with your eyes open. Remember the cost, honor the people who didn’t get home, thank the families who carry that loss, and then go live in a way that makes your gratitude visible. Call someone, say the thing, take the picture, play the game, show up for the fundraiser, cheer for the kids, let yourself be proud, let yourself be moved, let yourself laugh.

Let yourself notice when a weekend is more than a weekend. I am grateful for the Inland Northwest Girls Hockey Foundation and everyone who made that tournament happen. I’m grateful for the girls who have grown up in this sport and are now heading into whatever comes next. You’re gonna be great. I’m grateful for the service of people in my life. I’m grateful that I got to miss my mom because loving her still matters. I’m grateful that I got to share the ice with Jacob.

I’m grateful for the teams that played in front of me and made this old goalie feel like he still had a little magic left. And I’m grateful for the life that’s still in my hands. That’s all I’ve got this week. I’m Mike Baker. This is still here, still trying. Stay present, love your people, and don’t waste the life that you still get to live. I’ll see you next week. Okay, well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with a new song called Don’t Lose Your Smile.

This one’s special to me because it was it’s the first one that I fully built from scratch. Yeah, you all know I use AI and I create songs and we do lots of cool stuff with it, but I’ve been learning to play the guitar because I want to do this. And I had just I kept coming back to this simple percussion. It was just CGDG and it’s just coming back. It’s nothing fancy, obviously it’s terrible. But it had this natural little movement to it that I couldn’t stop playing.

And the song started a while, and then I had traveled down to Boise, and I was I take a guitar with me, so I was downstairs with the terminal, I had my little Martin travel guitar with me. I was just waiting for my flight home, playing that progression over and over while I was on the phone with Jacob. And he was traveling in Portugal, and he was telling me about this meaningful day that he had. And somewhere in that conversation, he told me, someone had said to him, Don’t lose your smile.

And that line just like landed. It landed right on the melody that I was already playing. And that was the song. I didn’t fully know it yet, but that was the moment that it was born. A dad in the airport, a son across the world, a little guitar, and a line simple enough to carry more than either of us probably realized at the time. So over the next few months I just kept shaping it. I worked on the lyrics and the melody and the feel. I played the guitar and sang the original version myself, and it was terrible.

And then I used my AI-assisted music and editing tools to help bring the final track to life, adding texture and the harmonica and the shape that it needed to become what I heard in my head. And that part matters to me too, because it is exactly what I mean when I talk about creating art and music. The tools helped amplify what was already human. They did not replace the moment. They did not invent the feeling, they helped me carry it further. A friend of mine, Nick Smoot, has said that AI should mean amplified intelligence, not artificial intelligence.

And I love that. And that’s how this song feels to me. The technology helped me amplify a real moment between me and my son. Well, while this song is for Jake, it’s also for anybody out there that’s just trying to hold on to hope and softness while life gets heavy. It’s for the part of us that grief doesn’t get to take. It’s for the part of us that still laughs in a locker room, cheers for kids, plays one more game, misses our mom, thanks the people who served, remembers the people who didn’t come home, and still chooses to let joy have a place in our chest.

And there’s a legacy piece in it too. Someday when I’m gone, my family and friends can look to the stars, the sea, and the simple moments that we shared and know that I’m still with them somehow. And that’s what this song carries for me. So as you listen, I hope it reminds you of someone that you love. I hope it reminds you of a moment you don’t want to rush past. I hope it reminds you that being alive is not only a responsibility, it’s also a gift.

I hope you enjoy it. Don’t do just my wrist, just to work it, don’t push past your feet, don’t let them drive. Keep your head up, keep your heart kind. Take your time and slow your mind. Make good friends, raise your bar, go find your smile, chasing the stars. We’re in this together, you mean skip the rocks, swim in the sea, look at the sky, feel the breeze, slow it down. It’s more to sea keep it real, keep it light, know and stay and wanti. When use your way, come back home.

I’ll be here you never alone. When the world gets hard, look for me by the fire out by the sea, we’re in this together. You and me, skip the rocks, swim in the sea, look at the birds, look at the trees, smell the flowers, watch out for the bees. And if one day I’m gone somewhere, look at the stars, I’ll still be there. Skip some rocks out by the sea. Don’t lose your smile. I’m there with you.