My father asked me this morning what I like most about myself. After a young lifetime of remembered and forgotten experiences, I am more than a laundry list of attributes and anecdotes. I can’t pull out a statistic from the spider web of interrelated knowledge and understanding that makes up who I am at this moment. I can only describe a process, the best process I know of that has developed my aspirations, desires, and subconscious tendencies. The one process that has defined who I was and became, has been football. I played football all through middle and high school. I started playing it as just another sport. I was always a very active kid, and played as many different sports as I could. Originally I loved the fast pace of the game, and that it afforded me a chance to hit other kids without penalty. Over the years, however, football came to mean more to me than a free-for-all arena. Especially by the time I entered high school, football was a community: the most important community in my life. Simply through getting up early day after day in the summer for grueling 2-a-days, and continuing that effort to just show up, battered and bruised, day after day, to get better and help my teammates achieve success, I forged myself a niche. The wind sprints, bag drills, lifting sessions, and hitting drills were, in a way, ways to achieve a sense of place for myself that I could feel like I earned, and that people respected. Not only was I working with others to achieve a similar goal (winning), but through that work we were becoming brothers. The sense of camaraderie on the field began to transfer over to everyday life. My teammates and I would sit together at lunch, joke together, hang out together after school, and lie to administrators to get each other out of trouble. Through a game, a real-life unity occurred. Because of this, many other students took a dislike to my friends and I. They saw us as rude and cliquish because we did not afford other students the same benefits of camaraderie as we did within ourselves. I learned that throughout life, no matter what work you put in to a similar goal with others, you will become closer through it, and others who do not understand that dynamic of connection through work towards mutual-goals, because they are not there working with you, will hate you for not connecting to them in the same way. Unfortunately, my teammates and my connection to one another also afforded mutual downfall. The fall of my sophomore year, we had a homecoming party at my good friend Craig’s house. Police showed up, while many of my friends, including myself, were intoxicated. I, and many others, received Minor in Possession charges, and had to do community service along with other school-related consequences. In general, the culture of drinking and partying, including sexual promiscuity that became prevalent throughout my group of friends, brought us a lot of misfortune by the time high school ended. These are all aspects of our lives that, thinking back now, were in some way detrimental, and they all maintained prevalence throughout our group due to the pressure of having (and needing) such a close group of peers, all curious about the taboos of adult life. Despite these negative effects of my football community, many positive ones still influence me to this day. Football practice, and the intense offseason training regimens required, placed very firm structure in my life. Especially due to the strictness of my football coaches, I learned that some things in life require consistent attendance, and intense work. I use this same structural, strict view with my schoolwork today, and it has helped me succeed thus far in college. Because this desire for structure was ingrained in me through football, I will continue to view my life structurally when I begin my career. With structure in my life, I will not give up or become unmotivated, or get into time-wasting activities such as drugs, and in effect “fall through the cracks.” I will remain on top of my duties so that I may achieve success in life, just as I did on the football field. The interplay between personal and team success was a balancing act. As a linebacker, I sometimes had to forego the “glory” tackle, and instead take up a blocker so that my teammate could get to the ball carrier earlier and the team would be better off. I maintain the belief that as a member of any community, one must always have the community’s interests in mind over personal ones. Even small personal success in the real world, as in the football standings, will be accentuated by team success. I feel better about myself knowing we won the game than I do knowing I got a lot of tackles but we lost. This type of mentality will help me in my life to come, as I will keep in mind only my family’s overall happiness, and make decisions to enable it, rather than forego my familial responsibilities for personal pleasure. This means of thinking is the most important part of becoming a man, and football has given it to me.
To be a man, one must have the energy and self-esteem to get done what needs to be done. Through running and lifting, I was always in very good shape in high school, and maintained a healthy lifestyle. I saw the benefits of being fit first hand, as I felt good, both physically and mentally. I would wake up in the morning feeling as though I had the strength to take on the world. To this day, I believe that a healthy lifestyle is important to feeling good on a daily basis, and enjoying life overall. I will always keep in mind the benefits of good health, and make it a priority in my life. I envision my future with excitement and optimism, just as I thought about the upcoming football game back in school. Football has given me the tools necessary to succeed in life, and because I carry them with me to this day, I still feel as though I am a member of the football community. Not the Mercer Island High School Football team, but the worldwide community of football players just like myself, who learned to achieve through hard work and discipline, bringing their brothers along inch by inch.
Any former player I meet exchanges a mutual set of lives memories with me. We immediately connect on learned ideals. We know we are brothers at heart. We have learned how to work together with others, to forego personal gain for the good of those who matter to us, to put ourselves all in for the things we believe in, to structure our time effectively, and to live actively so as to have the strength to do whatever we may envision. We have become men, no longer longing for the acceptance of our teammates through shared unproductive activities, foregoing personal wellbeing, but maintaining all the positive ideals of being a part of the gridiron brotherhood. We know that others, who were not with us as we struggled to cross the goal line after the last sprint of practice, who were not spotting us as we finished the last grueling set on the bench press, do not understand what connects us. They never will. You had to be there with us, working to succeed. We are with each other now, as well, working to make the most we can out of our lives.