This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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I hope you’ll endure a brief detour down the boulevard of my personal life for a moment. And don’t let the title of this post suggest I’m some mean ogre who shouts at people just to be a schmuck. You see, I coach my daughter’s 6-8 grade basketball team. All girls. Correction. Young women. A term I’m told is the preferred verbiage of the more evolved gender. Grunt.
Nine young women being shaped by me, if only to a small degree. I’d be lying if I said it makes me nervous. Actually, I love it. The incessant seeking and finding of each opportunity to help them be better. To tell them how great they already are.
And although I can tell them very little about becoming a mature woman, I wield the power of a god to help them realize their uniquely human ability to push themselves. To endure pain. To struggle and strive. To compete. Not for survival, like the animals, but for the sheer joy of it all. The joy of being and becoming.
I wonder if they get it. The bigness of it all. Through the lens of my masculine perspective, I can only imagine it slightly approximates the process of child birth. To endure unprecedented physical pain in the course of creating something more wonderful than words can convey. To bring forth life through pain. A constant reminder of the infinite value that hangs in the balance.
One day, several years from now, perhaps they will look back. Just as I have done on many occasions. Certainly, they will remember the pain. Barely. For the pain of today has no competition in the past. And when that pain comes. Inevitably. They will push. They will push themselves though the pain. Not because I am beside them shouting, but because they know the joy that awaits just beyond.
Am I dreaming to hope they might thank me when that day comes? If only within themselves? Probably.