Freedom In Change

Growing up I always had it in my mind that I would be a professional athlete of some kind. It was the biggest dream I could come up with when I got the bug that is sport. I spent many years of my youth indulging myself in the main American sports; baseball, basketball and some football. But very quickly, it became very clear that my strongest sports were Baseball and Soccer. I LOVED them.

It was numerous, uncountable evenings spent taking one car ride to the next to get to training sessions - soccer gear off, baseball gear on in the back of the Dodge Caravan or the Ford Ranger. For the latter, this usually meant holding on for dear life in the camper shelled back of my dad's Ranger. They were simpler times!

The commitment to both was as high as a young boy could muster. But that commitment was driven through the friends that I had on those teams - it's really why I was playing those particular sports in the first place. I was impassioned by the ability to spend that time with those dudes around me and the bonds created through the tussle and toil of long weekday evenings and Saturday mornings in the heat of a Northeast Oklahoma sun.

Sports changed me. The fury of competition gave me a desire to shine. It gave me the thirst to overcome. Find victory in the most unlikely of margins.

Even with all that molding, all that passion the games gave to me, that passion didn't translate into a professional career. I wanted it, but I didn't REALLY want it - not as much as I enjoyed being out with friends, having a girlfriend and playing video games. So what happened when my time ran out as an athlete? I was LOST. I was DEVOID of what I had identified myself with for most of my life and didn't know where the fuck to go.

There were several years of bouncing around - college, different states - New York, New Jersey and back to Oklahoma. Where I was supposed to be was as foreign to me as speaking German - the excitement was gone, the thrill was gone, the admiration was gone.

See, I hadn't been prepped for life after sports. I hadn't been prepped to accept change and to learn that it can be exactly what we need when we are least expecting it. That philosophy is not one that I would learn for another 10 years of my life. What I wasn't aware of then was that passions can be season's in our lives. The can be a chapter, they can be several chapters of our little worlds, but the point is that, like so many things, our biggest passions can take a different shape, they can fade into a distant whisper before they disappear altogether.

But society has taught us that our biggest passion is what we will be married to for the rest of our lives - that is and that only is if we are apart of the very fortunate few that find our passion and can pursue it. There are many out there working dead end jobs, living in stale, cold and dying relationships with callused friendships that leave them empty and of frigid heart. Turning to the bottle of a vice of an addiction that only entraps them deeper into that never ending cycle of defeat. They're doing this because they don't know what their passion is, don't know how to pursue it, OR they have done it, got that taste and now their passion has faded, it's shifted entirely.

Back to me floundering - I had my "Year in the Fog", but then came the reigniting of my deep desire to serve my country. I didn't think twice. I MADE IT HAPPEN. I served, but this is not the point of the post. I served my country and I can't tell you how proud I am to know that I dawned that uniform and had the privilege of serving next to some of the greatest men and women that this country could produce. Their character, their moral fiber is wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.

But again, not the point of this post.

Serving reminded me that I'm not 'normal'. I'm not made to conform. Nor is any man, for that matter. The cookie cutter lifestyle - desk job, suburbia house, 401k, none of that shit was for me. I spent most of my life living exactly how I wanted to live. I was who I was and couldn't be swayed from what I had constructed. Putting on those dress blues reminded me of the fact that I have a sack, I have a backbone and semi intelligent enough that I can and should be pursuing exactly what it was I craved out of my existence - ADVENTURE. Damn the norm. Damn the safe routes. My middle fingers like to blaze when it comes to these concepts.

Now, you'll laugh when I tell you what it is I got into after that last fiery, chest-beating paragraph.

Coaching. I started coaching professionally. Hell, it only made sense. I grew up loving the game of soccer. It was who I was and what I wanted to be. It's what I saw when I looked at myself in the mirror. Let me tell you, I didn't just start slow; I put the petal to the fucking floor and went after it. I quit a "comfy" job, moved an entire state away and dove my little ass into the deep end of that pool. It was some of the best years of my life at that point. There are people, players, parents and other coaches that I will consider life long friends, will hold memories with them until the day that I take my last breath.

Thinking of those years, especially in the heart of that experience, will make me emotional. When I run in to old players and they still call me "coach", I couldn't doubt for a second that those years were well spent. I got to give back. I got to make an impact and I'm no one special. I'm no great leader. I just worked my ass off, had my heart and mind in the right place and it paid dividends in a currency that will never be touched by a bank.

At this point, maybe you're wondering why the title, "Freedom In Change".....? Here it is; I coached for 10 years. It was my passion. It was who I was and everything I wanted to be. It gave me a second chance, hell, maybe a third chance at life. You notice in all the ways I speak on it, it's in the past tense. That's because it is - I do not coach anymore and, if I'm being 100% transparent, you couldn't pay me enough to EVER go back to it.

See, my desire for it changed. It shifted and I set my heart on something else in my life. MY TWO BOYS. The coaching gig was great, but I was there for everyone else. I was anti-social as well. It's the most anti-social job there is. But that passion took away from the time that I could and should have with my sons. The memories I was making wasn't the kinds that I wanted to be making with them.

When I realized the passion was gone it freaked me out a little at first, but that fear faded quickly as it came upon me. This goes to the point and the title of this post - change is inevitable and that includes what you think your dreams are and could be. We grow. Life changes around us and this means that our DREAMS and PASSIONS also change. When you can grasp that this is a good thing, that going from one dream to another is a sense of FREEDOM unlike anything else in your world.

If you're fortunate enough to have worked hard to get to your first passion then you know, already, you have a blueprint for what it will take when you accept the shift from the old to the new. If you know this then what do you really have to fear? What do you really have to lose? I'll tell you....

ABSOLUTELY. FUCKING. NOTHING.

So let that wind of freedom take you away. Let it envelope your sense and lead you to a new calling, a new opportunity, a new take on life. After all

, we only get to do this one time and if that is the case why not soak up as much of it as you can? Why not let your cup runneth over? Don't be afraid of change - grab on to it and ride it like you're Lane Frost for 8 seconds.

I can promise you, failed attempts at a passion will never hurt as deeply as the regret of an unrealized passion.

Find that freedom. Accept the change.

J.L. Copeland