The Oddest Face on the Sidelines
Hardship takes us back to basics, so maybe we shouldn't be too down about the economic challenges in Europe and the US these days. We've become soft during the boom years, risk-averse and so protective of our comfort that we don't value the motivating factor of necessity. In my life, however, one memory of a man who took a bad situation and turned it into a good one reminds me of the value of hardship. I will never forget him, standing on the sidelines of my soccer games in sandals and a pirate t-shirt, his hair and beard a mess, yelling like a crazy person.
It took not one, but two, twists of fate to get him there. First, his wife had left him, taking their son with her, and he was suddenly desperate to spend time with his boy. Second, our regular soccer coach was suddenly relocated by his company, leaving us without a coach halfway through a soccer season.
For most of us, when we are confronted by necessity we spend more time bemoaning our losses than looking for new ways to win. This is counterproductive. Need is like a vacuum that pulls us forward; if we resist its pull then we remain affected by it. If we go with it, then we usually discover that fate is kind as well as cruel and that in life, as in anything, new growth always follows decay.
Our new coach could have spent his time fighting with or resenting his wife. He could have done what most fathers do: invested his energy in the legal process in order to get his son back. Instead, he took the opportunity he was given, a chance to spend two hours with his son two nights a week during practice. That was a momentous decision for all of us.
It didn't matter that he knew nothing about soccer. He was one of those smart guys who'd dropped out in the 1970s, and not only had he never played a sport, he'd never paid much attention to the people who did. It didn't matter that he didn't know anything about coaching, either. In some ways, the less you know about something the better. Mistakes come more easily, and with them comes progress.
But he was an intellectual, and like most intellectuals he knew where to find information he didn't have already: the local library. Straightaway he went down to the local branch and read every book they had on the subject of soccer. He came away with a vast base of knowledge with no practical application, and he set about teaching us things we were far too young to learn.
That first season was an awkward beginning, to say the least. We couldn't do what he wanted us to do: we were either physically incapable or didn't understand. Our practices were disorganized. Our games were disasters. But he didn't give up, and the next season we got a little better. The season after that, we got even better. By the time we were ten years old, we were winning games by as much as twenty points, and we were the terror of the league.
His success was so great that they decided our team was making the league uncompetitive, and they split us up. By that time, though, the divorce was long past and finding a coach was no longer an issue. And by meeting necessity with determination he had proven something to all of us, which is why I remember him - wild hair, sandals, pirate t-shirt and all - as the icon of seizing opportunity.
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