when i was a young kid, i loved soccer. it was a time to get together with other kids, run around, and hit a ball. what could be more fun than that?
there are pictures of me playing soccer at this age, with all the other kids in the “Kickers” league. i look happy, free, innocent.
in the third grade, that changed. i was in a new team, and it wasn’t fun any more. we had a new coach, and he was Serious. for some reason, he really wanted us to a win. it was a competition, so that was the point, right? to win?
i was already apprehensive about that. the fact that we were going to travel to games also made me nervous. i wanted it to be like the old days: to go to the field and see friends and kick the ball. i didn’t want to go new places, or meet new people. i didn’t want Soccer to be Hard. i didn’t need to win. i just wanted to have fun.
the straw that broke the child’s heart was a training exercise we did. the coach assembled a row of two cones, diagonally opposed. our goal was to kick the ball to each cone.
the other kids seemed able to do it, but i couldn’t do it. i would kick the ball too hard, or in the wrong direction. i just didn’t have the motor control to manage the exercise. and on top of that, i was failing in front of all the other kids, and the new coach, who had nothing to say to me, just silence and a face filled with disappointment. i was embarrassed, ashamed. mortified.
i told my Dad i didn’t want to play soccer any more. it just wasn’t fun anymore. he was surprised—i’d loved soccer so much! he knew the coach was tough, but it still didn’t add up for him. still, he let me quit. and i never played sports again. in high school, i took a mandatory gym class instead of signing up for track or another sport. i associated sports with pain and suffering and shame, and didn’t want to do it at all.
i understand now that i was subject to a condition called dyspraxia. it’s like dyslexia, but for the physical world rather than letters and words and books. tasks requiring motor control, like that exercise with the cones—were going to be much harder for me than other kids. same goes for spatial awareness, physical reasoning, etc. doors have been my life-long nemesis—just opening and closing and locking them is weirdly hard for me.
of late, i’ve been learning to cultivate praxia. doing a redo-to-undo on learning lots of basic motor skills and physical abilities.
and last night, i connected this with some of the inner skills i’ve cultivated by doing some ideal parent figure meditation on this third-grade memory with the soccer ball and the cones.
i went to my Ideal Father and told him what had happened. he comforted me, and told me it was okay. that he loved me, and my worth wasn’t dependent on whether i could kick a ball a certain way or not—that i was worthy of love regardless of what skills i could or couldn’t do.
and then he said—“but i know U can do it! so let’s do it together. let’s see what we can do about this cone exercise.”
and then he took me by the hand, and brought me to the backyard. he set up one cone—just one—and said, “Michael, i want U to aim for this cone, but it hit way too hard, so it goes past it!”
i could do that just fine! and it was even fun.
“Great job!” he said. and he meant it!
“Now, i want U to do the same thing—aim for the cone—but it hit way too soft. So that your foot barely touches the ball, and it doesn’t go very far at all.”
i could do that, too! the ball barely moved—just in inch in the right direction.
“Okay! Now try to hit it again, in the right direction, and with strength, but not too hard. Try to go past it, even—but not as far as U possibly can.”
the ball went a few feet past the cone.
for about ten minutes, he had me go back and forth, so that the ball went too far, and then not far enough, but closer and closer, like a pendulum, until i found the Goldilocks zone. i started to get a better sense of how much pressure was needed to push the ball just far enough.
he congratulated me, and then had me do the same thing in the left and right directions. i was supposed to go way too far to the left, and then just an inch to the left, and then back and forth until i hit the left cone. and then again with the right direction!
it was faster each time—i got a sense of just how far to hit the ball to the left or the right to hit a cone.
“OK, great job Michael!” my ideal father said. “Now let’s try to add a second cone. i know U’ll do just fine.”
i was able to hit the ball back and forth, from left to right, hitting the cone each time.
then my ideal Dad shifted the cone diagonally, but that was no trouble at all, either. it was just partway between forwards and left!
at last, i was totally able to do the original exercise. i just needed a helping hand at developing some preliminary skills that were implicit in the more complicated version. i’d hit a snag at practice, and Dad had helped me debug it.
i could see what happened from there. how it all unfolded.
my Dad decided to give my Coach a call. they had a heart to heart, where the Coach shared some of what was on his mind. they actually became pretty good friends! and Coach was kind to me after that—he was still competitive, but he was gentler and understanding with me. that was actually the conditions i needed to get better at soccer. i ended up being a strong player on that year’s team.
i saw clearly that in that world, i kept playing soccer. any time something felt too hard, i’d talk about it with my ideal Dad. if it was an emotional challenge, he’d reassure me. if there was a physical skill i needed to cultivate, he’d help me outside of practice. same went for anything else, really. whatever it was, we could face it together.
i even got really good at soccer. i developed an affinity for playing as goalie. in the off-seasons, i picked up running, and my Dad taught me everything i know now in this world about how to train for running. with a good training regimen, i became one of the fastest kids in my school!
in this world, i felt a flood of relief enter my body. i could taste what it would feel like to have had all those years of competence and confidence, rather than fear and pain and shame. what choices i would have made if i knew that i could do anything i set my mind to, that problems were solvable, that obstacles were just learning opportunities—that i could ask for help if i needed it, and whatever challenge i faced i could overcome.
and while it didn’t happen like that in my life, i can live the rest of my life with the emotional, intuitive sense that, in my heart, it kinda did—because i lived through it in my imagination.