“People are small” (cont.)

Yes, I keep making the most of that new mantra. (See previous post.) “People are small.” Puts things in perspective, and so on and so forth.

What occurred to me the other day is that it pays off, not just for myself, but for my children too. They need me to be the kind of father who models perspective like that, especially because, at their age, they’re still growing into it themselves. They need me to show them what it looks like to be steady in the way I react to disappointments and criticisms. And blessings too. Emotional highs that aren’t disproportionately high, lows that aren’t too low, etc.

This hit home last week when our boys came home after a rough lacrosse game. They lost to their rival school, and one of my sons felt especially low. He plays defense, and he came home thinking the defense had let the team down, that he had let the team down. And apparently the coach kept giving him an earful in the huddle after each goal.

My initial reaction was, well, to over-react. There’s something about those moments that brings out the fatherly side in me that wants to rage and fume and roar and wrap my kids up and guard them from having to feel that way and fix everything with brilliant fatherly speeches. And do it all in a hurry, too, right? (Thus the theme of patience I’ve written about before comes in here too.)

But at some point I did manage to take a deep breath and realize, this is exactly when I need to tell myself, “Lacrosse is small.” This one game, and how we all feel about it today, is small. Get some perspective.

So let’s play the long game. Let’s adopt a long view. The main thing about this moment is not this moment, but how he looks back on it (if he remembers it at all!) when, say, he’s a starting defender as a senior. Or when he’s graduating. What will he see when he looks back on moments like this that forged him? That is, did they forge him, because he made good use of them?

And then the question for myself becomes, Will I model the kind of “lacrosse is small but your heart and your lifetime are big” perspective that helps him in just that way? If I can internalize this mindset, and do so deeply, so that it becomes a part of me, then it will more naturally come out of me in moments like those, when he needs it most.

Wow, I’d love to be a dad like that.

Before it’s too late.