Driving up to Tahoe yesterday and was thinking about Sunday Thoughts. Didn’t have anything glaringly obvious this week that stood out. Perhaps a pass this week, then I started thinking about Thomas. Those of you who have been on here for a while have heard a few thoughts of him over the years. He’s now 17, a senior in high school, I started writing about him when he was 7. Jack (19), Thomas (17), I’m a huge fan of them both, the term “my pride and joy” comes to my mind. T had a football game last night, first loss of the season. He’s pretty good. Plays left tackle on offense, nose guard on defense, plays almost every play of a game minus a break or two to catch his breath.
Go back 4 years ago to a Sunday Thoughts of me writing about T getting cut from the A team in 8th grade. He was devastated. Highly considered quitting the sport all together. B team was embarrassing. It was an upstart team for all the kids that were cut, first time they had ever had a “b” team. Home field was 20 minutes away, no cheerleaders cheering you on for this team. I received a call from the b team coach, I knew him from a job straight out of college, good guy. He asked about Thomas; I told him I thought he was out. Thomas was in his room, upset, embarrassed, pissed, etc…. I finally managed to get him on the phone with Sean. 30 minutes later Thomas came out of his room, didn’t say much the rest of the day, we left him alone. Next morning, he woke up and said he’d play. Sean had given him a world class pep talk on overcoming, on leadership, on Sean’s need to have Thomas on the team, on Thomas’s need to do this for himself and not quit when things aren’t working the way he wanted them to. Fast forward 4 years, and here we are. I’m not pleased w/ my son because he’s playing both ways on varsity, I’m pleased with my son because of what these seemingly small decisions represent, and the progress he’s made in his life. I’ve written about some learning challenges he has in school, overcoming those through extra effort. I’ve written about not everything coming easy to him and how that has impacted his life, in a good way.
I was thinking of two words while I was driving, progress and progression, curious if they had the same meaning. I looked them both up-
- Progress-Forward or onward movement toward a destination.
- Progression-The process of developing or moving gradually towards a more advanced state.
I love this. When I think of Thomas, I think of him making small pieces of progress throughout his life. “Progress” based decisions to not quit, to keep moving forward, to be kind, to appreciate his life. Those seemingly insignificant points along the way have led to the “progression” of his life. I view him to be in a more advanced state today than any point in his life. He sent me a text last week when he woke up, it just said “I feel F’ing amazing today”. I thought to myself “I’ll take some of that please”. You have to know Thomas to understand how little today has to do w/ football vs. everything else in his life, where he started, and where he is.
Couple of bigger points-
- Our family will be forever grateful for Coach Sean. People like Sean make me reverse the lens of my life to ask if I can have that impact on others? A quote I’ve used often from Kim (my wife), “people either breathe life into you or suck it out of you”, Sean breathed life into Thomas for an entire season which led to where we are today. Hang around the breathers, stay clear from the suckers.
- The world isn’t perfect. It’s hard to measure progress on everything. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like progress is being made. For me sitting here doing this, I’m realizing you can find progress in just about everything if you’re focused on it. The thought of making progress in situations, especially the hard ones, makes me think more intentionally and purposefully about my decisions. Enough of those progress-based decisions will lead us to a more advanced state over time.
Thanks for reading today.