essence.

I don’t know much about football. 

I know the Chicago Bears won the Super Bowl in (I think) 1985. I remember the players. The Superbowl shuffle. I remember driving to see Walter Peyton’s home (with the whole family) – more times than I can remember, actually.

I definitely remember Jim McMahon. I loved him.

Last year, I posted an Instagram Story on 2.8.21 – which was recorded early on Monday morning following the 2021 Super Bowl. I could not tell you who played in the game, or who won.  

This blog post scribes that 2.8.21 ‘nugget’ share.

Couldn’t compete with the Super Bowl last night. I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, but I listened to a podcast. I listened to Dax Shephard interview Tom Brady a year ago. I didn’t know much about Tom Brady. It was a cool interview to listen to. One of the things that stuck out was, (and it was an hour twenty minute – the stream of their conversation – it gets really normal. Just people having a conversation.) And kind of towards the end, Tom Brady was telling Dax a story. And he was talking about how football was his first love, and how he remembered playing as a kid. And baseball was kind of what he was good at, and what he was doing competitively up until ninth grade. But he loved playing pick up football, (or whatever they called it); and he just said, at the time of this interview he had been at the practice field. And he was talking about how he was just standing there, looking around and was like, “I fucking love football.” And just the way he said it, you capture all those feelings of what it’s like to have those feelings – in anybody’s life. As it relates to a self-care blog, you take that feeling, capture that feeling – and in the podcast it was really captured. You take that feeling, and you take away the football and capture just that feeling. That feeling is wellbeing. Even though it’s really apparent that it was football if you think about the story of Tom Brady, but the feeling exists. If you think about happiness, the Science of Happiness: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Achievement. It’s all captured in that experience. So there’s that. And then it made me think of this interview I listened to with Brene Brown and Simon Sinek. He was talking about Finite games and Infinite games. And Finite games, like football, being – there’s a clear set of rules, clear winners and losers, there’s a clear end point. Infinite games like life, the rules change. There’s new players and it’s infinite, it’s constant. What was interesting about Tom Brady’s interview, the interview was kind of about lifestyle choices and Tom’s growth over the years of choices he’s made and things he’s applied for his body, his health, his mind expanding. You can tell he takes advantage of any sports coach, life-coachey, psychology kind of thing; as does Dax Shephard. They both have access to the latest and greatest of the psychology and whatever, but it all goes to the same thing: there’s belief and…you know how you can have a favorite quote on your wall, and it sounds good, but there’s the integration of that quote. There’s the living and the applying. I don’t know if I’m making this connection good. It’s like Tom Brady is in this Finite game, but he’s living infinitely. He keeps growing, and he keeps applying. And relative to the game of football, his story, he did not…his whole thing: he started in ninth grade, didn’t play, his team was 0-8. He said, ‘I wasn’t even good enough to get put in to a losing season.’ And then he was drafted 199th, or something like that. Anyway, so the Finite game. But the infinite growth – that life is constant, happiness exists. To capture those moments. I think daily we have those moments where could stop and be like, ‘I fucking love this.’ And just capture that moment. And it’s the story you tell about it, because you can tell the story of the appreciation you have for the moment, or there could be that longing that something is missing.

The school team I work with LOVES football, and often starts off our weekly meeting discussing the recent games. When Tom Brady retired recently, I responded with an unexpected: ‘awe’. And my coworker quickly responded, ‘What are you aweing – he’s Tom Brady…he has (this and this).’ 

Shared Humanity. 

I may not know what it’s like to be Tom Brady. But I do know what it’s like to experience the moment when the good thing ends.

I’ve learned to not long, as if something is missing, when memories are triggered. I allow the feeling, and (when possible) choose appreciation that I had the moment. 

And I wish for more moments to capture the essence of the goodness. 

The moment. The capture. The feeling. The goodness.

It exists.