I have a friend who's a deer hunter. He loves to hunt deer. Deer hunting's an activity I have a hard time relating to. I can't imagine shooting a deer. Pete? He can't imagine filling out the brackets for the NCAA tournament. Couldn't care less about who's in the starting rotation for the Red Sox this year.

To each his own passion.

Mine tend to be vicarious. I watch sports on TV. Pete gets up at an ungodly hour, goes out into the woods, and waits for hours for something that's probably not going to happen.

I've read that deer hunters respect the hell out of their prey. One of the things they respect is a deer's super keen senses. How it focuses on what might happen in the next few minutes. Deer couldn't care less about what happened in the last few minutes. That's already happened. They survived that. What they want more than anything to do is survive the next few minutes, so that's what they think about.

What's that sound? What's that smell? What's that over there? Which path should I take? How lightly should I tread? What do I need to do to survive - the next few minutes?

How different we are from the deer. We are creatures of regret. We whine about what might have been. We carry our baggage, like carcasses on the hoods of our cars. Baggage that goes way back. Way further into the past than the past few minutes.

We go into therapy. We go into rehab. We talk and we talk and someone sits there listening to us relive the past.

The next few minutes? We're not focused on that. Yet we expect to survive. We expect to survive.