The youngest is knee-high to the ball. The oldest can still see three moves ahead of us all. We are friends, brothers, fathers, sons and uncles. 

The goals are not regulation. Four neon construction cones mark the corners. No painted sidelines. No referees. No whistles blowing. No offsides being called. No scoreboard to watch.

The parking lot fills with familiar cars and trucks. Beach chairs are unloaded and set atop the hill that looks down onto the field. Siblings and parents sit at the picnic table, spread out across the small bleachers, and roll out blankets. A small black and white dog strains at the end of his extended leash. Players make their way down the hill, smiles all around. Father’s stand alongside sons, friends hug, new faces are introduced.

The weather is perfect late July – blue sky framed by full green trees. Just enough breeze to leave the bugs struggling and unable to land on us long enough for a bite. 

Smiles everywhere. A received pass met with a smiling nod – remembering when we had played together in high school. A proud nod of the head from father to a friend as his son hits a swerving shot just wide. A collective cheer as a father pulls the ball back, making his son miss a near tackle. Praise from a senior player to a young goalkeeper for a ball saved and the beaming face of his dad from across the field. A misstep and trip over the ball by the one who will always be the best – laughter led by him.

There are moments of brilliance. The burst of inherited speed by a son. The crafty touch of the ball by a nephew – a family trait recognized. The top corner shot by a friend. A diving far post out-stretched save by a brother. A perfect pass by the one only kee-high to the ball and likely to become the best of them all. The impossible threaded pass by the one who brought them together.

Though some have met for the first time. Some have been passing the ball to each other for over half a century. Most of us play with thoughts of long ago summer pick up games – old movies playing like reruns in the back of our minds. We remember and share stories of the summer league games, the crowds, that championship game when the rival town teams had played so well. Unable to remember for certain the final score.

What is missing is the enforcement of rules, the stopwatch marking of time, the expensive uniforms, the sorting by talent and age to make it fair. The absence of these things make space for us to just play.

The night ends the way the pick up games always end – with a shout out: LAST GOAL WINS!

The intensity steps up. Bragging rights are at stake. A shot goes just wide. A long pass is struck the other way, a perfect first touch, a shot off the post. Back and forth – really playing now – competing like in the old days. The new generation seeing the origins of their speed, their touch, their vision, and their love for the game. The fathers and uncles remembering themselves and smiling as the new generation moves the ball. Hundreds of years of experience and stories pull together on a summer Monday night – just for fun.

The fading light and the settling wind quiet the field. Bugs begin to land and bite. Old legs grow tired. Young stomachs grow hungry. The crowd starts to shuffle in anticipation of going home. The music – hits from the 80s – that had been playing in the background beneath the players’ voices is now the only sound on the field. 

Then the one who brought us together picks up the ball, turns to everyone and makes the first and last call of the evening: DRAW!

Smiles, handshakes, laughter, thank yous, and – as we make our way up the hill and back to the parking lot, promises shouted out to meet again next week: same day, same time, same field, so we can play the game we all love for so many reasons.

Peace
Chris

I have a tape deck in my truck and a collection of cassettes stored under the front seat. Years ago the friend who saved me from living in my 1969 powder blue VW Bug made these tapes for me in anticipation of my cross country drive home to Massachusetts. My tape deck can no longer play those tapes – in fact the radio in my truck has not worked for years.

But each day when I climb into my truck to drive to school – I am the principal of the high school I went to – I think of those tapes, look at my broken tape deck and spend the fifteen minute ride listening to nothing.

We are swimming in noise these days. Printed materials have been replaced by earbuds. We are constantly backed against a wall of sound. We are drowning like glasses fountaining over after the water has breached the rims.

Consequently, our capacity to listen – really listen – to each other seems compromised to the point where nobody can really hear what we are trying to say. Listening calls for us to create and sustain empty space. Deep listening is absorbed – leaving space for more listening. When we drink in what another is saying, allow ourselves to process their words there is something that happens to the speaker. There is a lightness that comes from being heard. A handing off of something heavy being carried like a pack being set down on the roadside and left behind.

Creating the empty space seems to be the first step in listening. Disconnecting from the voice in our heads, the sounds pumping through the earbuds, the din of noise streaming from the jungle of devices we navigate each day. 

There is a fountain on the campus of UCLA where the water flushes down through the center. I have seen the way this emptying stream of water pulls people to lean over the edge – appearing as though they are looking for something lost. If we could only empty ourselves like that fountain, I wonder if those we know and love might be drawn closer, might feel we are inviting them to be heard – to fill the space we have created. 

I know our technology has improved our quality of life in so many ways. But along the way I worry about what is being lost unnecessarily and what might be done to balance out what feels to me like an addiction to connectedness that has somehow left us lonely. 

Being heard is powerful – there is a healing that happens when someone listens to what we have to say. And a reciprocal feeling of having helped that comes from listening. The challenge is not finding what to say – it is – oddly – in creating the space for listening. 

If I ever do get a new truck, I am going to ask for one without a radio. That way I can be sure to keep working at arriving empty enough to listen.

Peace,
Chris

Why do we accept racing as a metaphor for living? We are conditioned to always be moving forward, advancing to the next step, reaching the next benchmark. We live with the next thing in mind – always. Consequently, slowing down is not something we do well. 

At first thought – going fast does make sense. Speed is exciting. Being first is rewarded. Being last doesn’t feel good unless you are the last to have to do something bad like see the dentist, but even then going first would have meant getting it over with quicker. And there we are again racing – even when it means the finish line is something we do not want.

Aside from the experience of literally running in a race – I am at a loss to identify an experience where going fast produces better results. Becoming an expert takes lots of time. Solving complex problems requires deliberate thought. Understanding a difficult concept or mastering a difficult skill cannot be rushed. How many times – having made a mistake – have we heard the advice to “take your time” or “slow down.” The pinnacle of accomplishments are awarded to the tortoise, not the hare. Racing – outside of running – seems done out of an effort to erase the experience from our present. We get through school. We look forward to the week-end. We look to finish as much as we can from our “to do” list.

In my thirties, a friend – the fastest person I have ever run with – taught me to run slowly. I had always tried to run as fast as possible. Running was exhausting, stressful, something to get over with as soon as possible – always sprinting at the end to be done. Learning to run slow was hard work. It took mental effort. It took discipline. It called for patience. I had to unlearn the habit of racing. The results: I became faster than I had ever imagined possible. Running slowly taught me to run well. I became an expert.

The older I get, the more I observe that things done well are done slowly over time – not quickly within time. Over time with deliberate and consistent effort we move slowly to cure illnesses, to negotiate lasting peace, to evolve. How different would life be if racing was not idolized beyond the track? Just the simpler pleasure of reading a good book if we were able to ignore the temptation to finish. What if we were raised to slow down so we could extend the finish line? What if we gave ourselves permission – or even more challenged ourselves – to reread passages misunderstood, revisit the examination of problems before moving to solutions, or stop and let an inching caterpillar cross our path? How different living might feel if racing was not applied to our living.

Racing feels like an empty sales pitch, a marketing scheme that celebrates quantity over quality. A call to take the short cut, to do more than we can do well, to buy more than we can afford. Good for the economy, but not so good for our quality of life. Racing can be exhilarating to do and exciting to watch, but beyond the track it seems like a losing strategy. 

Peace,
Chris