Becky Schmooke

We live in a headline world.
Confidently half-informed.
Certain enough to argue, not informed enough to understand.

I sent this article to my husband to read because I’m flying to San Diego and then LA this weekend.

Later, while talking with my sister and brother-in-law, I mentioned my flight might be tricky with “10–40% of flights being canceled.”

My brother-in-law corrected me: “10%.”
I said, “Well, 10–40%.”
Bill jumped in: “Becky, it’s 10% at 40 airports.”

I’d sent him the article, then forgot to actually read it myself—something that was painfully clear by that point.

Owning my mistake, I laughed and said, “Well, I guess if you only read the headline, you miss the full story.”

It’s obvious.
But obvious is where most things fall apart.
Because we assume if something’s obvious, it’s automatic.
And it’s not.

The obvious still takes effort.

It takes pausing before judging, asking one more question, reading one more paragraph.
The headline might be enough to keep us talking
but it’s rarely enough to keep us understanding.

And lately, it feels like we’re doing a lot more talking than understanding.

(These photos are from four years ago- the last one was from this fall.)

I was spending my days and nights in mud and chicken p**p, hauling fifteen tons of field boulders down the hill so the goats had something to climb and people wouldn’t slide down a hillside of mud and p**p. I’d load them into the wheelbarrow at the top of the driveway, roll them down, lift them over the fence, and dig them into the slope—rinse and repeat.

During those long days, I listened to Ryan Holiday interview Rams GM Les Snead on The Daily Stoic. I remember thinking how great it was to hear someone in football take such a Stoic approach to his work—and how much sense it made. I also remember thinking how incredible it would be to bring Stoicism to athletes someday. But that world—NFL front offices, professional players—felt far from mine.

Fast forward to this fall. I was pressure washing those same rocks, cleaning off algae so no one would slip, when it hit me that the following week I’d be walking into the Rams facility—talking with their players about leadership, Stoicism, and Choose the Handle That Holds.

A week later, sitting in Les Snead’s office, I told him that story—how I’d first heard him while kneeling in mud. I also told him how much I appreciated one piece of his advice I still need to put into practice: that work after 9 p.m. is rarely our best work. My time would be better spent learning how to finally rest—so I’m calling that my next goal.

That moment in his office reminded me how much life can change in ways we never see coming—that what feels out of reach today might one day feel completely normal.

This is for anyone who struggles to stop long enough to see the growth that’s already there—too focused on the heights they haven’t reached yet to notice the ground they’ve already built.

Sometimes the view only shows up once you finally look back.

Can’t wait to be back in LA next month!