Sunday, November 8, 2015

When your best isn't enough: By 40 you know...

you either didn't do your best or you didn't really want it.

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.

The spirit of Uncle Elmo and Grandpa...  I'm the little Saint's swag in the middle.
Anyway, fast forward to my senior season of high school football for the Franklin Falcons and I was starting at tailback, cornerback, kick and punt return.  I was core to the team and I had earned it by spending an offseason running track (which I hated) in order to build speed and stamina.  The first scrimmage, I had 5 carries for 90 yards, two touchdowns and an interception.  We won 14-0.  Yeah, it was going to be a good year.

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.

Thanks to lineman Jason Otis for the photo
At the end of the season, at the team awards, the team captains chose the winner of the Falcon award  given to the player that represented the spirit of Falcon football.  Even though I missed 2/3 of the season, they gave me the award with one of the captains saying, and I quote:  "I saw Mike stiff arming guys, and running down guys from behind, and throwing his body into tackles.  I saw him on the sideline trying to stretch out a broken leg to get back into a game when we were getting blown out.  He made me want to play harder."

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?

When, after the initial sting of losing, it really doesn't matter whether you won, then you know you did your best.  Your best is done when you are so tired from giving it your all, that all you got left is euphoria and zen, om and the adrenaline dump, the joy that comes when expectation is irrelevant and the moment is the triumph and the triumph is you sitting with new muscle built, new skills honed, new proof that you can.   And now that you have that proof, you can apply it to getting what you really want and what's really for you.  That's the power of doing your best.  Imagine the momentum you could build if you did that every time you did anything.  

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.