Something I do when I’m alone is ask my phone what I need to hear and then I hit shuffle on my music and the first song that plays is what I need to know in that moment. Sometimes my phone gets on a good run and everything that follows feels equally as good.
So I just finished watching Kelce about Jason Kelce and some about his family. It’s mostly from last season and the buildup to the “brother bowl” of a Super Bowl. That was a painful game as an Eagles fan, especially with the opposing coach being what’s his name who couldn’t get it done as a coach for Philly.
Anyway, the ending is that he decides to play this season. I felt this weird sense of something. Jealousy? Happiness? Relief? It’s hard to explain. For me, being in the military felt equal to when I played sports in college. I psyched myself up before missions and work shifts when I was on the ground. I was always hyped up a bunch and I could feel myself turn on and get ready at some point. I was super high energy most deployments, especially later on as I was leading a crew.
I imagine that retiring from something you do for a long time feels the same regardless of what it is. Now, I didn’t make the money Jason Kelce has in his occupation, but there are so many similarities flying with a large crew and playing a team sport. And walking away from that hurts. So I was feeling a way. I decided to ask my phone to play me what I needed to hear.
It choose Electric Boogie by Marcia Griffiths. The Electric Slide song. It made me laugh instantly because that song takes me back and forth throughout so many different points in my life, being a Gen X group dance staple song and all. It hit me in that moment that when I remember dancing to that song, I don’t necessarily remember the specific times, just random dances in middle school, high school, college, weddings, randomly with friends at parties, and all of those memories come back with the song too.
I remember being in high school and enjoying that time but knowing I wanted more. I knew I needed more, but I wasn’t sure what that more actually was. But something bigger. Looking back at what came after that, I see that it wasn’t more that I was really longing for, it was purpose and a sense of who I actually was. I thought I knew who I was and what I wanted, but it turns out that I had no clue. I was just a vessel with an underdeveloped brain. I was longing to fill that brain with experience and knowledge from doing more, not just from existing.
I think about what I do now and what my impact on the world around me is and how that feels compared to the longing I used to feel. I coached 4 seasons of soccer, with 8 of those kids playing with me for all 4 seasons. For many of them, I was their first outdoor coach in a system that was not designed to teach them everything they needed to know. It took me watching the frustration of the assistant coaches last season to realize it wasn’t me that couldnt’ get it done, it was the system. I stepped back for two practices and let them take the team while I took the goalies. Much to their surprise, an hour a week wasn’t enough to teach them the basics and yet an hour with some of these kids was way too much time together. By the end of the season, they understood the predicament I had been in all that time. They also saw that some of these kids (including their own) didn’t always care to work hard.
I thought about the lacrosse tournament this past fall and how I took 4 goalies-3 brand new to lacrosse, into something they had never seen before. All 3 new goalies cried at the end of their games because it was hard. It starts to feel impossible to do anything right and it knocks you off your game. Your confidence plummets and you suddenly want to do anything but stand there taking shots on goal. You want to just step out of the way. It’s a great analogy for life. I have no regrets about playing goalie and now coaching it. Especially when one of my 3 jumped back in goal later in the tournament and played a great game even though we lost. At the end, as we walked back to our tents, I asked her how she thought she did and she said, “I know I did awesome because I stayed in the game in my head and didn’t let them get the best of me.” She’s a 4th grader. That was the moment that I felt my impact on her because she was saying the exact same things I said to her after her really tough game. One of the other team’s coaches actually came up to us and told her she did awesome. I was proud of her in that moment.
As I reflected on the person I was back when I was dancing to Electric Boogie, it hit me that all of those versions of me would be so proud of the version I’ve become of myself. There’s not as much variation from version to version as there used to be, like I’m just fine tuning things these days. But I know that my impact is so much bigger than I even realize. I’m not ending world hunger, being featured on the news every day, or curing cancer. But what I am doing is vowing to just be me each day, whatever that means for the encounters I have each day. I try to greet people happily and be kind. I’m brave and I push myself to do things that make me uncomfortable all the time. It’s almost like all of my failures have taught me that it’s ok to fail, to lose, to miss the big picture sometimes. What matters is getting back up and trying again. And I have no shortage of energy for that. My curiosity has me constantly trying new things out. I sometimes find myself scared as I am doing something new but I just push that away and keep going.
One day I might be famous. Or I might not be. It doesn’t really matter to me. At this point in my life, I can go wherever I want, do whatever I want, and no one is pestering me or recognizing me or getting in my way. I like that. I don’t think I would like the attention of of being someone famous. I don’t want to say that I have figured out the meaning of my life, but I think I am pretty damn close. I think there are so many things I do well that I can offer unique talents to this world. I think that I can do more than the average person and handle more adversity because I already have overcome so much. I am important to so many people and I know that without me, their lives wouldn’t be as rich. It might sound cocky to say that, but for me it’s not. It’s a win; a realization that I do matter and I do make a difference. For someone who spent years wishing to leave this world, it’s huge to realize that it’s a blessing to so many that I didn’t.
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