Almost exactly seven years ago I was standing in the parking lot of Steamboat Springs High School looking at the gorgeous day, and looking up at the mountain that I had been considering calling home for some time, and trying to make a decision. I had, at that time, just been offered a job teaching math, coaching football and lacrosse, in Steamboat. The job paid pretty well, especially to do something that I enjoy doing, and something that some people would say I was born to do. The job also included a flexible schedule such that ten days a month I would be in snow every afternoon.
Seven years ago I was fairly fit, I was coming off two very successful years coaching football and lacrosse, and I was not yet fat and ugly. Seven years ago I had a knee that was still very solid and very capable of skiing anything. Seven years ago my view of life was very different than it is now.
This was a very difficult decision for me, but the consensus seemed to be if you have a chance to coach college ball then you coach college ball. I am glad I can now say that I coached college football, and I do not think I will ever forget that experience. I am glad that I have had the chance to coach lacrosse at the college level as a head coach and now know that I could have been, am now, good at that, but I have to wonder how happy I would have been living in that community, a community I had felt a part of for a long time prior to the offer. I have to wonder if I had been in that community for the past seven years would I had found someone that I wanted to spend my life with, or t the very least significant time with. I have to wonder if I would be a happier, more at peace person today if I had simply stayed there.
It is hard to explain exactly how I felt in that moment, but I can say that there have not been a lot of moments since, if any, that have felt that good. For those few moments, standing outside that school, looking up at unmistakable beauty, knowing that someone, a group of someones, wanted me to be a part of something they were doing, thought that I could contribute, to be valued in that moment and at peace. To say that every moment since has been a step down, or a step backward would be such a gross understatement that it would not be doing it justice. At the same time, at least I had that moment, and having remembered that time, that moment, and knowing some people never even get that, I guess that memory will have to be enough.
I could have done without the seven year free-fall however.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
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