TIME RUNS OUT

IN SEARCH OF PERSPECTIVE

I’m in the middle of a road trip that takes us to Phoenix for a few days to visit friends and then into SW Utah where we’ll spend some time in Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.  I love road trips if for no other reason, because I’m a journey kind-of-guy.  Although I have no doubt I will love Zion and Bryce Canyon, I’ve oftentimes concluded that the destination is a bit overrated.  The richness of the moments tend to be somewhere in the middle of the journey when the only constant is the road in front of us.  Any moment can be filled with the unexpected whether it be a view or a thought that appears to come from nowhere.   

If we do it correctly, the drive can be a forced slowing of the pace life tends to throw at us.  If we turn down the music, put down our cellphones (hopefully drivers aren’t fiddling with the phones anyway…), look out the window, and engage our brains, it’s amazing the thoughts that can begin to surface. 

Somewhere in western Colorado or eastern Utah, a memory from 15 years ago came to mind when I was still a high school basketball coach. 

I believe I was reflecting on thoughts I’ve had that likely tie into my most recent post on “WHY WAIT FOR THE BOMB TO GO OFF?” because as typically happens when I’m involved in windshield therapy, I find myself reflecting on where I am, and where I want to be.  If you’re at all like me, oftentimes I need to intentionally get out of the hole called “Routine” which I have dug for myself so I can gain a better perspective of my circumstances. 

Let me tell you the story of the locker room and then we’ll get to the greater point.

A SOMBER LOCKER ROOM

Our 2009-10 team had a pretty good year.  Without going into much detail, the boys’ basketball program had been a bottom dweller in our conference for a handful of years and had gone through four coaches within a period of four years.  I was by no means a program rebuilder, but by simply focusing on fundamentals and challenging the boys to rewrite the story of what their identity was going to be, we had become a respected team by the winter of 2009-10. 

The team was senior dominated with 8 of the 12 players planning to graduate that coming May.  We enjoyed some “firsts” for the program that year.  We won the holiday tournament in December, won our first district playoff game, finished with a record over .500, and earned the right to be invited to the state regionals.  Our reward for all this… a date with the undefeated and #1 team in the state. 

During the game, I was so proud of the boys because they truly carried themselves like they belonged on the same court with the #1 team.  They were not intimidated, and they seemed to fight back from moments that earlier teams may not have recovered from.  When it was all said and done, we lost by 12 points.  Watching the growth of my players, many whom I began coaching back in 7^th and 8^th grade as the middle school coach, will go down as one of the prouder memories I was allowed to be a part of.   As a coach, it was never about the wins and losses… it was always about the character… and these boys had it. 

After the game, as we gathered in the locker room, many of our younger JV and freshmen players also came in.  My assistant coach and I talked with the boys about the importance of perspective in times like this, about the incredible growth we had witnessed in the team, about their ability to challenge the #1 team in the state, conducting themselves in a manner that should make them and most certainly made their parents proud, and I also needed to point out that they would always be able to say they played a part in establishing the high school program on a new level.  The words were all true and yet there was no magic speech that could take away from the pain and disappointment that came with the loss. 

My assistant and I then let them gather their belongings, change, and prepare to get on the bus for the ride home.  I wandered around the locker room, a conversation here and there, a hug, but mostly, reflecting myself on the experience. 

At some point, it occurred to me that the quiet conversations taking place around the room were mostly the freshmen, the JV players, and a couple of the sophomores and juniors on the varsity team.  I began looking around specifically at the seniors.  Some sat quietly on the floor, some sat by their lockers still in their uniforms lost in their thoughts, some quietly got changed and organized their belongings, but few were saying much of anything.

It occurred to me that no “Wait until next year” speech was going to comfort my seniors because their high school basketball careers were finished; there would be no next year for them.  Their high school story was now complete, it was written in stone, and there would be no opportunity to rewrite an ending even if some of them wanted to with all their hearts. 

In that moment, I was reminded of my own experience sitting in a locker room in Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, IN some 30 years earlier.  I was reminded of how regrets seem to trickle into these moments as we reflect on the compromises made, the times we chose a shortcut because we didn’t “feel” like putting in the work, the times we deceived ourselves into believing the moment really didn’t matter… we still had plenty of time to put the work in, to make a better commitment, to pursue those goals that were important to us.  But it’s a lie because at some point, we do run out of time.  Time runs out on the clock and the season is over, the opportunity has passed.

TIME WILL RUN OUT

We always want to think there is still time left to do those things that have been so important to us.  We want to believe that someday we’ll get to it, we’ll make the time, we’ll make the commitment.  We convince ourselves in a moment of compromise that there is still plenty of time left on the clock.  We have plenty of time to make the adjustments our dreams require of us.  But I’m here to remind you, time does run out.  There will be a moment we all face where we have to live with the choices we made, the training we put in, the practice we committed to… we’ll have to live with compromises we made when we didn’t “feel” like making the sacrifice required of our dreams, and there will be no “wait-until-next-year” speech that applies to us.

What is that clock for you?  I don’t know.  It may be a season in your life that passes, it may be a life event that changes everything for you moving forward, it may be time itself…  Sometimes time is simply up and the opportunity that was once present is no longer there.

REFLECTING THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD

As I drove along the two-lane highways somewhere south of I-70 in eastern Utah, somewhere past Moab and the Canyonlands, I reflected on this idea that time will some day run out for me on my dream… you know, that mountain I so dearly want to climb again.  It’s 15 miles up that hill and back, and I’m hoping my upcoming knee replacement surgery allows me another chance to get further up the trail in 2026 than I have been in several decades… maybe even to the summit, but time is running out.

Time is also running out on me for my dream of writing a book.  It’s not that I must write it by a certain age, but time can take many forms.  Perhaps if I delay much longer, the spark will disappear, perhaps the choices I currently make serve to compromise my passion for future writing… I don’t know. But what I do know is this, if I want it, I better go after it now because the opportunity may no longer be there someday.

There will come a time when I too sit next to my proverbial locker, reflecting on a loss… reflecting on all the times I failed to act and prepare myself for the opponent I faced… and I will be left alone to quietly wrestle with the questions that come…

“Did I give it all I had?…”

“Did I leave it all on the floor?…”

“Can I be proud that I gave everything I had?…”

People can say whatever makes us feel good in those moments, but what matters is the conversation that takes place when we sit alone with our self.

So, I share these thoughts in this blog because I am a coach, and I hate seeing my players lose.  Sure, you’re not my player, we don’t have that connection.  But I love to see people win, and if I can play even the smallest role in their stories… a role that serves to help a person climb higher, that’s what I do.