Thoughts on Thursday: I Used to Watch the Wrong Players

I used to feel sad watching the veterans.

Every World Cup, every tournament, I'd find myself watching the young guys full of speed, fearlessness, the guys who look like they could do this forever. And when the camera cut to a veteran getting subbed off, I used to feel a little sorry for him. Like I was watching something sadly come to an end.

And the last few weeks watching the World Cup, I noticed I wasn't doing that anymore.

I was watching the veterans on purpose.

Maybe because I finally turned 40, maybe because my favourite players are reaching that age. Maybe because I've spent the last six months finally getting honest with myself about my own health. Maybe because my dad died young, and I keep seeing others lose people too soon too.

Whatever it is, I don't see decline anymore when I watch an older athlete play.

I often see somebody who's figured out and accepted what season they're in.

Here's what I mean.

When I was in my twenties, I thought life was supposed to move in one direction. Build more. Achieve more. Always be climbing. If you weren't planting something new and harvesting something big in the same year, you were falling behind.

But that's not how any of this actually works.

My dad's not here to age into a season I'll never get to watch. My aunts and uncles are getting older right in front of me. My grandma sometimes repeats herself now. Someone in my family always seems to be either welcoming a new baby or slowing down to care for someone who raised them. Nobody gets to skip a season. You just get to decide how you show up for the one you're in.

I think about my own year through that lens now, too.

There were seasons where I was building, chasing a business idea, saying yes to everything and trying to prove something. There were seasons that were just about survival as new dad, exhausted, learning Selma's whole world from scratch. And this past year has been something else entirely. Not building. Not proving. Just tending with care. Getting my health right. Picking up pickleball out of nowhere and falling in love with it. Getting back on the mats for jiu jitsu and remembering what it feels like to be a beginner again. Getting present with those who I love and who I know love me, for me. Getting honest with myself about what I want … or at least trying to figure it out.

None of those seasons looked like the others. None of them were wrong.

A farmer doesn't get frustrated standing in a frozen field in January. He's not out there every morning wondering where the corn is. He knows exactly what season he's in, and he knows what that season is for.

I think most of us just never got that memo about our own lives.

We compare our winter to somebody else's summer and wonder what's wrong with us. We watch someone else's business take off, someone else's kid become independent, someone else run a marathon and we forget we're not even looking at the same season. We're looking at the harvest of something they planted years ago, quietly, when nobody was watching.

Meanwhile we're standing in our own frozen field, feeling like we're behind.

You're not behind. You're just in a different month.

And here's the part I keep coming back to: winter doesn't last forever, and neither does the excuse. I can feel myself heading into a summer right now, on the court, in my health, in how I show up for my family and summer isn't just about enjoying the harvest. It's about deciding what I plant next. What I do with this season is going to decide what grows in the next one. That part's on me. Nobody plants the field for you.

Watching those veterans on the pitch these last few weeks, I didn't see guys clinging to who they used to be. I saw guys who stopped trying to be twenty-two and started leading instead. Fewer minutes. More impact. Different role, same purpose.

I see that same shift on the sideline every week.

The best coaches I know aren't the ones still trying to be the best player on the field. They're the ones who figured out that their job changed. They stopped needing to be the one who scores and started being the one who sees the whole game. The one who is leading sometimes without saying anything, who's watching kids that could be carrying something heavier than a bad practice, observing who needs to be pushed and who may need some room.

And the best players I coach aren't always the most talented ones. They're the ones who stop comparing their season to the kid next to them. The ones who accept that this year might be about grinding minutes from the bench and getting better in practice, not about starting every game and who trust that the season will change if they stay in it.

That's the thing I actually want to hand off, more than the metaphor itself.

If you're a player right now, in whatever version of "player" that means for your life, grinding, waiting, not seeing the reward yet. You don't have to force this to be your summer. 

Do the work winter is asking of you. It's still building something.

And if you're a coach, a parent, a leader, anyone somebody else is watching, your job isn't to relive your own prime out loud in front of them. It's to help them see the bigger picture of their own season.

I had a kid on the bench a few weeks ago who wouldn't look at me between shifts. Frustrated. Comparing themselves to the teammate next to them who was playing every minute. I didn't tell them it would get better. I told them this season wasn't over, it just wasn't their time yet and that some of the best players I've ever coached spent a year exactly where they were sitting.

My dad didn't get all his seasons. I'm not going to waste mine wishing I was in someone else's, and I'm not going to let the people I coach waste theirs either. Wherever you're standing right now, on the bench or field, building or resting, that's not a problem to fix. 

Give yourself the grace to be exactly where you are. 

And if you're in a season to lead someone else through theirs, do that too. Winter's not forever. But it's not nothing, either.