One of my favorite memories in my lifelong duel with underachievement is from when I played football. I only played two seasons, one when I was in 4th grade and another in 8th. In 4th grade, I played defense only. For those who don't know, in youth football players usually play both offense and defense to get a sense of where they shine. But I didn't need to shine. I wanted to, and indeed when my friends and I played in the yard, I was a prolific nerf-ball quarterback. But we didn't have to memorize a playbook in the yard. In organized football, there are plays, and I didn't feel like learning them, so I didn't. So the coaches, left with little choice, stuck me on all-time defense where I spent half the time wandering around hoping I didn't get yelled at, and the other half getting run over by the ball carrier. This was generously classified as "tackling". When I played in 8th grade, I was prepared to repeat the same process. The coaches asked me if I wanted to play offense and I said I only played defense before. So, seeing my indifference to the idea, they stuck me on all-time defense again. Only this time, my athleticism betrayed me.
During one practice around mid-season, I was covering a pass play deep down field. I pass got broken up and I hussled over to retrieve the ball. Seeing one of the other players back at the line of scrimmage with his hand up, I casually lazered a 45 yard strike into his outstretched hands. The coaches were...surprised.
The wisdom of an 8th-grader who hasn't seen much of the world is quite limited. And with my lack of wisdom, I had always assumed every boy could throw a football like I could. Halfway back to the huddle, I realized something was happening. All three coaches had their eyes trained on me and the offense coordinator was all but chewing me out for not telling them I could throw at the beginning of the season. Here all this time they thought I didn't want to play offense because I wasn't any good at it, or that I was afraid of getting murdered by a giant linebacker (for the record, I was). What they didn't (and wouldn't) know is that I was simply more lazy than I was ambitious. I didn't want to take the time to learn the playbook. But coaches be greedy.
They'd seen too much. I'd shown them too much. They were no longer in a position to squander a potential weapon. But the season was half over and we already had a quarterback who, now that I thought about it, didn't really throw the ball too much. Or ever. Oops. So in a flurry of improvisation, the coaches drew up a few new offensive plays that I could learn easily without having to know the entire offense. They stuck me at tight end so I could block most of the time, but every so often I could be split out as a wide receiver and run a double pass - a play where the quarterback would throw me a lateral, making it legal for me to be the one to throw to a receiver down field. And just like that, we became the team with two quarterbacks.
The results were decent, and I'd like to think the experiment was a success. However, I, and by extension, we, could have been awesome. With a modicum of extra effort (or any effort on my part), I could have learned the playbook, been the first-string quarterback, and actually utilized my athletic ability instead of being and feeling wholly unprepared on every play. Greatness was there for the taking, but I was just happy to participate. I had no desire to test the upper limits of my potential.
But I have a theory.
Greatness is a receipt. It's the evidence already collected, labeled, and sitting on the courtroom table in clear plastic baggies. If I wanted to be great at football, learning the playbook wouldn't even be a decision. It would be a natural step toward the objective and I would have done it without even thinking about it.
I thought I wanted to be great at all kinds of things, but the evidence never materialized. We are what we do, and I didn't do the work necessary to be any better than good at those things. "Looking at all these receipts here, all I see are mediocre, mediocre, passable, mediocre, good, and quote I've seen worse unquote...sorry, sir, I don't see any greats".
So that's how I'm going to win 2025's battle against underachievement: Buy more greatness.
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