You don't have to be the best (Part II)

Before anyone panics, I'm (moderately) certain that this is only going to be a two-part series. This episode is about my lovely boy, and my attempts to manage his hopes and expectations so that he doesn't follow the same contorted mental path that I have, and accepts that doing things for fun is OK, being average at things is OK, and enjoying his life is more important than winning. Nothing like setting myself a nice easy goal.

There have been Things Afoot in the life of LittleBear this year that I haven't written about here, partly for fear of jinxing things, and partly for fear of turning into one of those parents who casually drops into conversation how Tarquin passed his grade 8 Euphonium exams when he was seven*.

As assiduous readers will have noticed, LittleBear loves football. He plays football at every opportunity, he watches football at every opportunity, he can remember (in mind-numbingly tedious detail) the events of matches lost in the mists of time to normal mortals. So, in the brief, golden window of less-lockdown during the summer holidays, he attended a football summer club for a week. And at the end of the week, not only did he receive a trophy for being "Player of the Week", we also received an email telling us that he'd been identified as having "strong attributes" and would be invited for a five week trial with the Norwich City FC regional development program.

And thus followed five very cold, very wet, very windy Friday evenings spent in the middle of the fens, watching my gorgeous little boy training with a group of very talented other little boys (including, fantastically, two of his team mates from our team). I loved the experience of being able to just watch him train and play, and not being responsible for eleven little boys' boot laces and bumped heads, and social distancing, not to mention actually trying to keep them focussed on the training exercise in progress. And I loved watching a really, really good coach at work. It was genuinely inspirational to see how he kept the boys attention, kept them working hard, didn't suffer any nonsense, and yet still allowed them enough of a free rein that they were having fun and laughing.

But, enough about me, back to LittleBear. After a nervous wait, during which it turned out Norwich City FC mis-typed my email address and therefore didn't send us the all-important invitation, my little boy has been asked to join their Player Development Centre. I am absolutely over the moon for him, but it has now opened a huge can of worms for us. Because football clubs are ruthless. They have no loyalty, they have only the desire to be the best and coach the best. And year on year, they assess who "the best" are, from their existing children and any others they scout, and they "let go" the ones who don't make the cut. Some day, LittleBear will be "let go". It could be after one year, two years, five years or ten. But it will happen, and we need to prepare him for that, and for the fact that it doesn't matter. Because he isn't Lionel Messi, and he never will be, but that's OK. He doesn't have to be the best, he just needs to be himself, and he can love football and play football and have a brilliant time no matter what level he reaches.

Which is how we generated our Football Hierarchy - people who live, breathe and love football, but have stopped at different steps along the playing scale:

Coach A: plays grassroots football, coaches grassroots football, loves the game passionately but never played anywhere above grassroots.

Coach W: coaches grassroots football and in his younger days played for a non-league side. Genuinely talented, loves the game but never came close to a professional career in it.

Junior Brown: plays for Scunthorpe, has had a successful but not stellar career pootling up and down the lower reaches of the English league system. Outside the clubs he's played for, has anyone heard of him?

PE teacher: former professional footballer for a second-tier club, former football manager, now LittleBear's PE teacher. A man who made a career out of football at a fairly high level, but probably hasn't been heard of by most of the country.

James Tarkowski: a stalwart of the Burnley Premiership team, with two international caps to his name, but still hardly a household name.

Marcus Rashford: Man United superstar, England superstar, champion of children, and man everyone (in the UK) has heard of.

Lionel Messi: there's only one Lionel Messi.

Each one of them reached a point where they knew they were not going to be Lionel Messi (except Lionel Messi, don't be pedantic). But each one of them kept playing, kept enjoying the game. Each one of them will have been "let go" at some point in their playing life, and each one of them will have carried on anyway, playing and training and enjoying the game without being Lionel Messi. The end of one path isn't the end of everything. And for every player who reached even the modest heights of Scunthorpe United, a thousand children didn't. And most of those thousands of children who love football will never rise above the lowest rung in our Football Hierarchy, but they will still play football and love it.

So this is the conversation we've been having with LittleBear, and he has helped craft the Football Hierarchy, in an attempt to make sure he sees and feels and knows the value of playing football just for fun. An attempt to help him see the huge numbers of people who play and love football without it being a career. And while it's brilliant to have been invited to join a big club's youth development scheme, at some point that will end, and it won't be a reflection on him, and it won't change how much we love him or how proud we are of him. And nobody becomes Lionel Messi.

Meanwhile, I'm still super happy for my little Claret and Blue Canary**.

Someone at NCFC will probably be quite cross about this

* Note: LittleBear's name is not Tarquin, and he does not play the Euphonium.

** For those who don't pay eagle-eyed attention to English football, The Bear family's beloved Burnley play in claret and blue, while Norwich City FC are nicknamed the Canaries, with said bird on their crest.

You don't have to be the best (Part I)

About a week ago, while meandering aimlessly through posts on Facebook, I stumbled across a Kurt Vonnegut quote that a friend had posted, and it really hit a chord with me. (I often find myself mildly exasperated by "inspirational" quotes on the internet, and positively filled with rage at some of the utter tripe that's ascribed to Winnie-the-Pooh but which was absolutely not crafted by A A Milne. I'm assuming they're Disney quotes, or just random bollocks that someone on the internet made up, but I find them irksome.)

Anyway, back to Vonnegut. I was so taken with this particular piece that I even spent some time hunting around for references to it, to try and be as certain as possible that it wasn't a Winnie-the-Pooh-ism. And I was pretty satisfied that it was the real thing.  And the thing is, I have been going back to it several times a day, reading and re-reading it. Marvelling at what a radically different world view it presents to me, and wishing, perhaps, that I had had this particular epiphany several decades ago.

“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes. And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.” 

 

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

 

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”

 - Kurt Vonnegut

Pretty* obvious isn't it? It's great to do things just for fun, because you like them, because they make you smile, just because. You don't have to be the best, you don't have to "win", you just have to do it and you'll be a richer, more rounded, more interesting person. But that's not really me. While I certainly can't lay claim to the level of talent that Mr Vonnegut has, I can definitely relate to the "achievement-oriented environment". I need to be good at everything I do, I need to excel, I need to prove myself. And it's absolutely exhausting. Not to mention the fact that there are lots of things I don't do, because I'm a bit rubbish at them. Or maybe just average. I avoid huge swathes of life's opportunities for fear of failing, or of not being the best at it. 

In a moment of synchronicity, today I found my original diagnosis of anxiety and depression and the accompanying recommendations made by the psychologist to my GP. Illuminating excerpts include:

"PhysicsBear worries that she is not good enough, despite the evidence going against this, and engages in anxious predictions... PhysicsBear has unrelenting standards which are exacerbating her beliefs... she fears that she will get something wrong and as a result of this she oscillates between over-preparing and avoiding..."

And one of the therapy goals that was identified in 2013 was:

"Not to be as concerned that she is failing if she is not perfect."

So really, seven years later, I shouldn't find Kurt Vonnegut's words such a revelation. But here I am anyway, trying to accept that just doing stuff for fun is OK. I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to be better than other people. Me is enough. Doing is enough. 

So if you hear an off-key warble, aimlessly meandering from note to note, not quite holding a tune, it's just me singing. Because I'm crap at it, but it makes me happy. And if it doesn't actually cause anyone physical pain (which may be debatable) then perhaps I should give myself permission just to do one thing really badly, if it makes me happy.

* At this point in my writing, IdiotCat walked across the keyboard and wrote "hjukkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk,55555". Tempting though it was to leave his words for posterity, I felt it detracted from the readability.

Age is just a number

But sometimes it seems like a dauntingly big number.

Take 9 for example.

My little baby is 9 years old today. Half way to being allowed to vote. Potentially half way to moving away from home.

It's a terrifying thought, especially as I look around and see my cousins' children attending university, setting off on gap years, launching themselves into their adult lives when it barely seems moments ago that they too were round-cheeked little moppets, earnestly explaining their imaginary worlds to me.

A month ago we knew what we were doing for LittleBear's birthday - today would have been a football match against the toughest team in his league, and tomorrow would have been a friendly football match arranged amongst players only from our own club as a substitute for a party. Parties were banned in covid-land, but football matches weren't, and since there's nothing a Bear loves more than playing football with his friends, I was making use of one of the only perks of being a football coach and arranging a match for him.

But here we are, back under lockdown, where not only parties are verboten, but so are football matches. Unless you're being paid millions of pounds and then you can still play football, because covid recognises pay cheques.

It was not, therefore, quite the birthday he had dreamed of, or we had planned, but (I hope) it was still a fun one. And what was perhaps most striking was just how many good friends my little boy has. Friends who walked, drove, or cycled round to our house in the pouring rain to deliver cards or presents. Friends who called by video, or sent emails. Even a friend who came out and played football in the park in the rain*. I think, and slightly hope, that LittleBear takes it all in his stride that he has such good friends rather than being surprised by it. But I was genuinely touched by the consideration, kindness and love from his friends and their parents that helped make his birthday a day filled with surprises and happiness.

There are many things in the world that are dark and miserable at the moment, including today's weather. And yet today was filled with all that was good about the people in the small corner of the world we occupy. And cake.

A successful birthday present

* LittleBear and LittleFriend will never let rain come between them and football. And to keep within the covid-rules, they met up on their own as "two individuals from different household exercising together" while I ran and walked round and round the park. In the rain.