The Reciprocity of Impact

Here's a text message I received from a player:

Hi Coach. Thanks so much for helping me out and getting me into lifting so I could be a part of football.  I really love the sport and its making a huge impact on my life.

   I'm not positive who sent it because there was no stated name.  But I have an idea.  At the end of practice yesterday one boy couldn't finish his conditioning.  He labored over his push-ups, and struggled to finish his sprints.  He made his way alone, the final player to finish.

   When I noticed him I yelled to his teammates.  "Why is he doing this alone?" I asked. "He's yourbrother."  They ran out and rallied around him, and finished as a group.  That young man works at a silent, steady pace everyday.  He wants to get better, and it shows.  He also lost his Father one year ago, to a sudden heart attack.

His Father was an invested Dad, and the boy could count on his steady support.  They admired each other mutually, and were allies in the world.  When the Father died the boy had to find his own way through void.  The consoling, repetitive phrases of reassurance were useless, and the mob of replacements was an insult.  The boy would run away from his home during memorial gatherings to preserve the Father he knew.  He was alone, and he knew it.

I often wonder if the boy hears what he deserves to be told, often enough.  I wonder if he's figured out how to be with his Father so he can share what only they had shared.  I wonder if he knows everything he's done has been witnessed in awe, even if there's no one to tell him.

When I read his text about how this game has made a "huge impact on (his) life", I reflect on the nature of impact, and how it depends upon two independent entities.  I reflect on how each of those entities has an intended trajectory before they collide, and how the impact of the collision renders both, futile.  I reflect on how the unanticipated intersection at the point of impact becomes the defining moment, not the orchestrated distance covered prior to it.  I reflect on how its the unforeseen moment, the unscripted event, that provides valuable insight.

And impact is an equal opportunity provider.  If you're part of it, you're gonna be altered.  I may have exposed a boy to something that's become transformative to him.  Observing how he's navigated through it has transformed me.  So I'm going to send him a text.  Here goes:

Dear Boy,

• Thanks so much for allowing me in when it would have been so easy to keep me out.  If you're able to accept help as an adolescent boy, you'll receive it as a man.  I didn't learn how to admit I needed assistance until I was forty, when it was too late to correct the course set by pride.

• Thanks for reminding me that the value of work is in the doing of it, not the acknowledgement of its completion.

• Boy, you're not part of football.  It's part of you.  It was never my decision to allow you in, or keep you out.  You said you wanted to play, and I welcomed you in, just as my coach did for me when I needed a home, and a family.  The torch is yours now. Pass it on.

• Boy, the way you've honored your Father made me admit to the fortune of having mine, despite his faults.  I can only imagine the emptiness you preserve for what only he could offer, and how you endure it to honor him.  I've sat in silence on occasion and told your Father what you're doing, and becoming, even though he already knows.

• Boy, I don't coach to teach a game, or a plan.  I coach because of the impact the ones who play it have had on me.  I owe you the thanks.  You help me more than I'm capable of helping you.

Thank You, Boy, for the impact you've had on me.

Kenny Chesney: Dont Blink:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpKBMywiEjw

I Hope You Dance:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK-RqS203Mc