I recently had an assignment for a class which required me to have to spend some time in personal reflection. The assignment was essentially to craft the story of your life’s spiritual journey. Mine has been pretty short and mostly uneventful, so you would think assembling it would be easy.
The second half of the assignment was to then relate whatever aspects of the story I wanted to share with fellow members of the class. That shouldn’t have been particularly challenging either. After all who else would better be able to do that than the person who lived it. But it proved to be a bit more so than I would have imagined largely because of the focus of the journey.
I confess I have never been particularly interested in analyzing the past. I always felt that if I was looking backwards I wasn’t moving forward. My theory, for the most part, was you learned from the past and moved on. I have never believed there was a need to attach an historical rear-view mirror as a permanent feature. There will be time enough for that when moving forward becomes impossible.
All that being said, I have to confess I found the exercise to be interesting. More so because that experience in reflecting was supplemented recently by a reception held for Coach Jim Craig. Coach Craig used to be the football coach and general overseer of Starkville High School youth. Those high school years are much more formative than credited by the psychologists and other developmental professionals. Teachers and mentors who help shape those teenagers deserve recognition for their efforts. So it was that evening for Coach Craig.
At the reception, I was struck by the camaraderie still in evidence between the football players between themselves and Coach Craig. It reached into the here and now so much so that the many years that had passed all but disappeared. Bill Buckley, a member of my class of ’70, provided a tribute video since he couldn’t be there and in it mentioned how he was still powerfully affected when he ran into Coach Craig, even after a substantial passage of time. He felt as though when he saw him again, he reverted to being 16 again. I suspect that to be a common reaction to such a strong figure from the past.
As I looked around me there were numerous members of my class, of classes that preceded mine and those that followed. Some hadn’t changed much and some were largely unrecognizable until I was reminded of who they were. Once the reminder introduction had been made I could visualize my classmate from all those years ago.
No matter the changes whether it was a loss of hair, a middle-age spread or the inevitable creases that come with time, after I recognized them, the years fell away and I saw the teenager they once were. The beauty of youth, the expectancy of all the good things that life would hold, the exuberance of an unencumbered spirit, the uncertainty of your place in the world were in evidence for me as they visited among themselves.
I remember the youthful romantic pairings that came and went fueled by Friday night football dates. It is easy to recapture the smell of the fall Friday night, the sound of the crowd, the announcer and the stirring beat of the drums when the band marched into the stands for a home game.
There were so many important life experiences in high school that I am fascinated at the strength of the pull of football. I wonder what it is that makes some of our most vivid school memories revolve around that particular sport? Others have an impact, but football evokes the visceral and the emotional in ways that basketball or baseball does not. Kenny Chesney captured its essence in the “The Boys of Fall.”
What is it that stirs our collective souls so much that we revere less the academicians than the coaches? The cerebral just doesn’t satisfy that innate desire for exhilaration. We need our hearts to pound and our teams to win. We need our spirits lifted from being more than we thought we could be. Football calms that craving for an outlet of conflict to prove ourselves. It beats the hell out of war.
It would seem the military and football share a similar spiritual impact. All the elements of human excellence and human wrongdoing are possible to be found in each. Maybe that part of anyone’s journey is better viewed looking backwards for its most positive reflection.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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