Time and energy
Jara and I had an interesting conversation going to school this morning. She told me a story about someone else who had kids who played football. She started out but saying, “Mom, they cheated!”
When you get pads, and play tackle (I guess, this is all here say… lol) you must weigh in and if you are overweight for your class you must wear a red ribbon and can’t carry the ball. The larger kids are harder to knock down.
Her story continued about a coach who told two of his kids to switch so the bigger kid could carry the ball. Per the story, this switch caused the other team to lose. She was aghast at this, how dare they cheat!
I was proud of her integrity, knowing that she had a great idea of right and wrong, but I asked her. “What does this have to do with you? What did you learn?”
She was quiet for a moment and finally said, “I won’t ever switch jerseys.”
We talked for just another minute after that and I asked how her life was effected. “Well, it wasn’t mom.” And if this changes any part of her day. “Well, mom, it doesn’t.”
I have been playing this in mind over and over this morning, thinking of the things that we can learn.
When you are looking in to someone else’s situation, it is easy to judge. It is easy to say, “They are wrong.” The thing is, just like a window into a house, you only get a small piece of the puzzle. You don’t know the whole situation. Maybe it was a crazy, win at all costs coach. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe the coach had nothing to do with it and the kids planned it. Maybe the kid just really wanted to play too. As an outside spectator, three times removed, I can’t say, so I can’t judge.
Jara wanted me to join her in a bashing of the coach and was quiet when I just said that it was none of our business. Again, it is easy to focus on someone else’s shortcomings so we don’t have to look at our own. As a society, this is becoming more and more common place. We jump on the problems of politics, or movie stars or that person on social media or that person that we may not like. We focus on the things we see them doing wrong through the window. It makes us feel better about the things in our life.
We place blame on things when they go wrong. They switched jerseys and that is the only reason our team lost. What about skill or practice? What about the chance of an off day? What about things that we can control. If I can blame someone else, I am not at fault and I don’t have to change.
What can we accomplish if we don’t focus on the other person? What can we accomplish if we don’t place blame?