Instead of the stuff that bubbled inside him coming out in a healthy way, he just kept yelling at the boys. He hadn’t been like that at the other games. But this week externally we often heard him yell at the kids, “What are you doing?” Internally I imagine he was asking himself the same question…what happened this week…what did he fuck up…what am I doing. He didn’t ask it of himself, instead the question got misdirected at the boys. But, that question only makes things worse, causing the kids to pause and ponder what they’re doing instead of just having fun and kicking a ball in the grass.
At one point one kid just picked up the ball in the middle of the field. A parent, who turned out to be his dad, yelled, “What the hell was that?” The kid’s response was, “I didn’t know what to do.” The dad got it. Oh yeah. That’s right. He’s 6. He doesn’t know what to do.
Six year olds need coaching not yelling. The coach needed coaching. I need coaching. How do we learn? How do we improve? By being encouraged. By having our positive qualities praised. By getting instruction that is constructive.
There’s a natural feeling that comes with being yelled at…shame. Right at the end of the game Blake kicked the ball out of bounds. The coach yelled, “Blake that’s three times you’ve kicked it out of bounds!!! Keep it in the field.” And his tone of voice indicated that Blake had disappointed him.
But, what was that doing? Reminding Blake of his mistakes. You fucked up. You fucked up again. Now I’m yelling at you telling you that you fucked up a third time. That feels shitty. When I was a kid I would always dwell on the negative voices and couldn’t hear the positive ones. Coach said I was a fuck up. Maybe I am a fuck up.
That said I’m sure it’s super hard to be a soccer coach and none of this is me trying to call out the coach. Because I think the situation is common. We get yelled at. We fuck up. We have people around us who have issues. We have issues. And other people’s issues affect and often bring to light our existing issues.
So on some level, here’s another mess. And Blake and I will get the chance to try to clean it up. That’s what’s cool. Coach had an off week. So what. He’s a bad ass and a great guy to be sacrificing his time for our kids. I can’t control the coach. I can only control what I can control.
So, Blake and I get to work through it. The problem is there’s another issue at hand. Blake’s mom and I are divorced. I started thinking some of this stuff through as I was walking away and wanted to go back and encourage Blake and talk about what it felt like when the coach yelled at him. But, he was already getting ready to head out with his friend’s family.
I’m a part-time dad. I can’t control that. But, I can give the kids my best…and more importantly my real…when I do have them. I can’t imagine what that feels like to want time with your daddy, but see him drive away. Actually, I can. It hurts.
Blake has wounds that I helped create. And it fucking sucks. Because he had no say in it. It’s not his fault. As I wrote that I thought of that line from “Good Will Hunting”. Will had a shitty past and Robin Williams character encouraged him to work through his shit. Finally, they ended up having a moment where Williams just kept saying, “It’s not your fault.” “It’s not your fault.” “It’s not your fault.” Eventually Will breaks down, weeping.
The last time I watched the movie I broke down too. My past. My fucked up family. My insides that are wrecked and broken. It’s. Not. My. Fault. It’s not your fault either. Do you currently have a “Why am I doing this?” situation in your life? Why do you drink so much? Why do you do that thing that you shouldn’t? Why do you struggle with this or that thought? Or beat yourself up over little things?
You know why? Because you’re 6. In there somewhere you’re still six. You had your heart broken as a kid and you still need coaching to try to get things straight so that you can stop kicking the ball out of bounds and feel shitty about yourself. Or better yet, when you inevitably kick the ball out of bounds, it's still going to be okay. It’s not your fault. The fucked up things you do. There’s a reason you do them and it’s not your fault.
Look at the things in your life that are fucked up. Talk about them. Everything goes together. The issues that our parents graciously passed down to us lead to our own issues and mix those up with the issues of our friends and loved ones and you’ve got a clusterfuck. Life is this messy game of Twister, but man it’s possible to get untangled. It’s possible to work shit out.
If Life’s big twister game has left us mangled, crippled and with our back turned to what’s really important, then we need to find the balls to call time out. To look at how we got so far off track. To not go with the flow and put your left hand on blue just because everyone else is doing that.
Take the time to look at things from a different angle. That’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Leaving the marriage. Leaving corporate America. Leaving the church. I see things differently now. I’m sure people from each of those aspects of my life think I’m crazy.
But, that’s what’s great. They don’t get to yell at me, “What the hell are you doing?” In my Christian life I had to care about what everyone else thought. In my current life it’s the opposite. I don’t have to prove myself. I just have to be myself.
Am I fucking crazy? Maybe. But, maybe that’s a good thing. I think I was crazier when I just went with the flow of life. Picture that. Me completely lost. Completely stuck in unimaginable twister positions. And yet if someone asked how I was doing, I’d say, “fine…everything’s great.” It wasn’t great. But it is now. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just real. And if people call real crazy, so be it.
I love Ray Lamontagne’s cover of Crazy. “I remember when I lost my mind. There was something so pleasant about that phase.” It was so refreshing to think thoughts unlike what seemed to be mainstream and instead of having my therapist judge me or yell at me, she pretty much gave my an “Amen.” Telling me I was on the right track. Telling me how much she loved my writing. Coaching me in a healthy way.
We’re all crazy. We all need coaches. We all need to know it’s not our fault. And to have people walk with us through our shit instead of yelling at us and turning away in anger. Let’s go man. Let’s untwist ourselves and put our shit out in the open, not caring what people will think, but only caring about getting better.
I think it’s possible to have our everyday…how we feel about ourselves...be equivalent to a 6 year old kicking a ball in the grass. How could there be greater joy than that? Complete freedom to be ourselves, wearing earmuffs to silence all the voices trying to yell at us that we’re doing it wrong. Sometimes we’ll pick up the ball because we don’t know what to do. So what. That’s the beauty of this. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing, but something is so right about it. Strap on your shinguards and run with me like we're 6. Come on. It'll be funny.
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