I learned football watching the New Orleans Saints lose at five years old. I sat between Grandpa and Uncle Elmo and learned to be hard on our team, to analyze what they were doing wrong and to tell them about it, loudly. Grandpa and Uncle Elmo also taught me to acknowledge a good run, a great catch, or a hard tackle, loudly. Growing up as a Saints fan, sometimes all you had to cheer about was a good play. Winning was rare.
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The spirit of Uncle Elmo and Grandpa... I'm the little Saint's swag in the middle. |
Little did I know that we would lose the first four games by increasingly ridiculous margins, and that my season would last exactly those four bad losses long. I broke my leg making a tackle against Ridgewood and I haven't played another down of organized football since.
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Thanks to lineman Jason Otis for the photo |
I had spent the remaining 8 games of the season pissed off. I eventually stopped going to games because I was so furious and hurt. But when I got this award, I let football go with a happy heart. I didn't care about 1,000 rushing yards. I didn't want a college football career. I just wanted to play and for somebody to acknowledge how much heart I played with.
Sometimes you want something and you don't get it. You try as hard as you can and don't achieve the goal. When we give all we have and it just isn't enough to get us where we want to be, there can be a heavy toll. Call it the funk of failure.
And that funk of failure can hang around long after the initial sting of losing. It can snowball into self-doubt and settle into low self-esteem. It can slow burn as resentment and smolder as resignation. It can creep into your mirror and drain your belief in what you see there.
But by 40, I hope you know that if you did your best and didn't get something good out of it you really didn't do your best and that's probably because you didn't really want it in the first place.
So many times I thought I wanted something, but what I really wanted was something else. I didn't want money, I wanted the feeling of freedom from worry about money. It wasn't the person I desired, but the feeling of being wanted that I really desired. It wasn't the big break that I longed for. I wanted proof that I was destined for big things.
Ultimately you don't need money, a person, or luck to feel free, feel sexy, or feel like the future is bright. I believe that if you do your best at what you are doing, you will feel these things no matter the outcome. When you lose yourself in something you love, you feel free. When you work your body into optimal shape, you feel sexy. You work on your dreams like you believe in them, then you feel hopeful. Everything on top of that is gravy.
And how do you know when you've done your best?

It's kinda like Pierre Thomas making that hard, six yards after contact. There's enough encouragement there to get him, the team, and all the fans to the next play. It's kinda like doing your best is always enough.