New Free Life

(Chapter 5 ~The Game~) As a baby the ball was in my crib, so I’d been told. The agent that I signed with after college football came to a close told me, “I want you to sleep with this football.” He was a business man, driven by the money that the game had to offer. I was a lost child, driven by the chance to become great at a game.

I began playing full contact football at the age of eight when I placed those two shells over my shoulders and that helmet over my head for the first time. Considering the career options that life had to offer, it’s obvious why I, as a child, would give my best effort to being a ball player, it was fun and I was blessed with the ability to be dominant as the best. Most kids would choose the easiest route to success if they could and I did, by using my body, as oppose to our mind. 

Certain wise people would realize at an early age that a game is just a game and would not focus their lives on the pursuit of mastering it, but wise I was not. I approached playing ball like I was going for my doctorate in it. Eventually I grew to see the light. Playing was fun, but it made no difference to the big picture that remained distorted by our lost ways.

The truth is that playing ball would all ways be fun and I would have probably kept playing, had they decided to keep me around and pay me more than ninety percent of the world to play a game. It was crazy, getting paid more than teachers to entertain fans who often sent their kids to school to be parented.

A game, ruled by the owners who had real life pieces to shuffle on and off the field because we often saw no better way to attain the freedom we sought thru finance. So there I was, one of the pieces, chasing a ball with the chance to cash in.

(Chapter 13 ~The Great Way~)There was a huge misconception in our world, that greatness was achieved thru status and or possession.

There were people who thought I was something special because I played ball at the highest levels, but I was more of a friendly loner who hadn’t found a better way. Focusing those hours of my life on mastering a game was my lost way.

Though I was nothing but grateful for my days as a player, it would have been the downfall of my chance at greatness to have dedicated my entire life’s work to a game. Rather than face that world of lost ways with intent to change them, the game allowed me to escape them as if all were good.