My son wants to be a goalie. In a worthy team. He wants to play for the best with the best. I understand. He works hard, and soccer is on his mind all the time. Naturally he wants to be noticed for his talents and his hard work. Naturally he is frustrated with the uncertainty. I’m driving us back home and I watch him (corner of my eye really since I’m driving) as he shares his frustration, and he tells me about his expectations of his current team, of soccer in general, and himself. As I watch him, I notice the familiar future obsession that we all experience, especially during our teens. We are afraid to go unnoticed, afraid our talents will go to waste, afraid of an ungrateful future dragging us down. I want to tell him life is so much more complex than this. Life unfolds in unseen ways. Life only happens here and now. Life is his sincere love of soccer, and his ability to go for it day after day relentlessly. I want to tell him to pay attention, to wake up from the dream of the future, and the story of the past. And I know, he needs me to listen. This is one of my better moments of parenting; I don’t lecture, I don’t fear for his future, and I don’t try to make him see what he can’t in the moment. Instead I listen, then when he pauses I acknowledge what he just showed me and told me. I also tell him to please breathe, to notice that he did his best today, and now he is in the car in this beautiful night driving home, and he can now nourish himself with food, tend to his body with a hot shower and a good night’s sleep. Ok maybe there was some lecturing and pleading hidden in these but he breathes and relaxes a bit and looks out the window. I’ll take that as a win.
You see I don’t know what the future holds. What I know is we need to let it unfold the way it will and actualize from there. I know goals have been the pinnacle of this culture. Even I ask him what his goals are at the start of every school year. But a goal that is oriented outside without developing any understanding inside can only lead to another goal, and I know firsthand how we lose ourselves running after goals. It is like what I read somewhere: We are racing towards the finish line, mile after mile (goal after goal), in our rush to catch up or surpass others we do not stop to connect with the world around us, but the finish line is really the end of life, our death.
The next day is different. He is in a better mood, he must have done some excellent saves, touched that magical addictive moment that happens in sports. We talk about colors; how we see the same wavelength but couldn’t be sure if our minds interpret for example red in the same way, we wonder at this quite often really. Do you? We think it is improbable that we all see it exactly the same shade. What do you think?
And so he continues to grow…
Photo by @filozofish
