The Wall In Life Brings Us Joy- Herb Brooks

The Wall in Life Brings Us Joy

    In the next few weeks, thousands of area high school seniors will place tasseled mortarboards on heads full of plans, dreams and schemes.  How often do these plans work out?  What effect does the great novelty of life beyond high school have on a graduate's hopes?

    I think back to a question Peppermint Pattie once asked Charlie Brown.  'Do you know any good rules for living?', to which Charlie Brown answers: 'keep the ball low; don't leave your crayons in the sun; use dental floss every day; don't spill the shoe polish; always know before entering; don't let the ants get in the sugar; and always get your first serve in.' Confused, Pattie then wanted to know, 'Do they work? Will those rules give me the good life?' She isn't certain, even though what Charlie told her is conventional wisdom, what everybody already knows.

    I am not so old as to have lost my memory of what must be surging through the minds of you who are about to step from the sheltered life of the student into active participation in the prime of your life.  We all have anxieties, so what should we do?  We should face them, head on.  Let me ask you, have any of you ever been right up against the wall; and gone nowhere?  What can you do?  When every trick in the book has been tried; when every letter of the rule has been followed; is there anything else that can be done?  Or is this it; is this the end?  Is this wall the limit of possibility?  Are we convinced that there is nothing more for us beyond this wall?  Have we decided that there is no way through it?

    All of us have been up against such walls before.  Life is full of walls: between youth and adulthood; between college and our life's work; between people- children and adults, husbands and wives, and friends.  History is full of walls.  Moses and the people of Israel ran right up against the wall, as did their father Jacob before them.  They no sooner escaped to freedom from Egypt when they ran up against the wall of water in the Sea of Reeds.  There they were, the sea in front of them, the Egyptians in horses and chariots behind them.  The people of the United States of America escaped to freedom from the old world only to run up against the wall in the new world of the Mason-Dixon Line.

    Everyone must face such a wall, no one escapes.  And finally, as for all of us, there lies ahead the wall of death.  What is incredible about all this is that we know there is only one answer to the wall, and that is we must struggle to get through it.  But most of us would rather do anything else than face that wall.  And not one of us really wants to be there in the first place.  How did the wall ever get there between husband and wife?  What happened to the bright expectations that contrast so painfully with reality?  How did the wall ever get there between parent and child?  What happened to the dreams that were dreamed while bringing the child home from the hospital?  What happened to the plans for raising the perfect child?  What happened to the fun and joy anticipated at the beginning?  And what happened to the dreams, plans and joy anticipated when first setting out on life's work?

    Something has gone wrong.  We know that.  We know something is radically wrong.  What a vast difference there is between the way life could be and the way it actually is.  Yet that is the way life is, and has been from the beginning.  And so the way lies ahead of us.  We cannot force our partner to fit our dream of marriage, we cannot force our children to be what we want them to be any more than God could force us to stay in the garden.  And so we work and struggle with the realities of life and the actualities of existence.  That is our choice.  Do we face the realities of life and struggle with the wall that stands before us, or do we turn away, refusing to go through the wall, refusing the struggle, refusing to face life as it really is?  Of course it is easier to let things slide, to follow the path of least resistance.  And yet there are two things we forget.  If we decide to turn around again, the wall will still be there, bigger than ever.  And if we do not face the wall, we may not see the trap door at our feet.

    How difficult it is to have faith enough to run forward against a door-less wall up to the last fraction of an inch in the certain hope it will surprise us and let us through.  But we cannot possibly know the door will open if we do not go all the way.  The minute we stop, the second we decide that it cannot possibly happen, then the door never opens and we never know what is on the other side.

    The 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team ran head on into such a wall.  But they refused to stop and instead made the decision to go right through it.  It was not that they knew they would win; they could not possibly know that.  But they faced the realities of life.  They knew how good the Russians were.  They knew how badly the Russians had already humiliated them just a few weeks earlier.  Beat the Russians?  Impossible.  Or was it?  They knew they were young and inexperienced, but they refused to take the easy way out.  They skated head-on against the wall, never once halting and deciding there was no way through; never once telling themselves that they could not win.  No stress, no pressure; just joy and happiness.

    And yet there is still one more reason.  For we have to ask, why do we, or anyone, even start forward toward the wall at all.  Because that is the way life begins.  The will-to-live, the breath of life, the pull of possibility; we are the ones who decide whether to stop or keep going.

    But why the wall, why the struggle?  So that our joy may be full.  There is no other way, but we never know if we stop before we go go through.  So why struggle?  And struggle: for what?  Which is exactly what the Soviet team expected our team to think.  But those kids had not made that decision.  And neither should we.  Or, are we going to lose out on such a great joy.  That joy is peace of mind.

    No, you probably will not be as good as you want, or be able to achieve everything you would like if one word is a part of your vocabulary- IF.  IF I would have done this and IF I would have don that.  IF has become America's disease, a mental cancer that has only one cure all: peace of mind.  That is the intangible that will last and endure.  And this value is more important than the game ore events that occasion them.  It is as simple as that.  Our philosophy should be simple.  Nobody should convince us that we have ever accomplished enough.

Pg 60 Americas Coach