Good Enough

It’s a character-building day for my youngest son. It’s not something that’s 

easy to watch as a parent, and my heart breaks just a little for him. But my brain 

knows that my tougher-than-nails boy will be even stronger for this later.

It’s really not a bad thing. We’re attending a tryout for a sports team in 

another city. We are far outside his normal comfort zone. And, we are not here 

because he asked to come. We are here because we let him know it wasn’t a choice 

to attend. It’s not because we are dead set on him making some team, although that 

may be a choice he gets to make down the road. It’s about much more than that.

Here’s the problem. Our son is a social, outgoing, friend-centered middle 

schooler. No kid in middle school wants to do anything different than the rest of the 

gang, to strike out on your own can be social suicide. So of course his first question 

about this try out is, “Will any of my friends be there?”

Our answer, “We don’t know. This isn’t about your friends, it’s about you.” 

He is a talented athlete and student, who relies on natural ability for a majority of 

what he does in life. But as talented as we know he is, he just doesn’t see it. He 

sorely lacks self-confidence. And while he has had a few experiences to test his 

mettle, there haven’t been many like this.

So, here we stand in a lobby full of people milling about. I can feel the 

nervous energy sparking throughout the room. I see my boy standing silently 

beside me, scanning the room. There are no familiar faces to cut the tension. He 

is completely on his own. Not a friend in sight. I know he’s feeling a lot of things 

but among them is not happiness. He’s far outside his safe zone and mad at me for 

placing him here.

I start to feel my resolve slipping, and for just a minute I give in to that look I 

see in his eyes. 

But, we’re forging ahead, because here’s the deal. In life, there are many 

uncertainties. You will face many challenges for which you need to be armed with 

knowledge. You need the knowledge you gain from attending math and science 

classes and reading about history. But you also need self-knowledge. Who are you 

as a person? How do you respond to personal challenges? What’s inside you that 

you can reach in deep for at times of doubt?

Self-discovery of this nature isn’t easy to come by. And the best way I know 

to learn is to have as many experiences as you possibly can, to navigate as many 

situations as you can when you have no one else to rely on but yourself. Then, when 

you come out on the other side you may find that along with relief that it’s over, you 

feel something else too. You may find that you’ve discovered something about 

yourself that you didn’t know before. Something you can draw on, and build on, in 

the future.

Am I naïve to think a sports tryout can do all that? I don’t think so. I 

recognize now, as an adult, that so many challenges I’ve faced in my life could have 

been handled much differently if I had faced my own fear a time or two in a safe and 

controlled way, with a challenge like this.

When he finally walks out, sweaty, happy to be done, and ready to go home 

and I ask, “How’d it go?”

I already know the answer. Because regardless of whether he lands on a 

team or not, I know he’s already won.

I say to my son, “You don’t know this now, but you are going to be in many, 

many situations in life where you’re going to have that feeling you had today again, 

and going through this now may come in handy later.” 

The fact is we all need this. To be self-confident, self-assured, and able to 

represent yourself in uncomfortable situations takes practice. It doesn’t happen by 

accident alone. There will be moments when mental fortitude will pay off and the 

strongest guy will have the edge.

This is training for that, something we can’t manufacture at home, or in a 

practice, or at school. This is the most valuable training money can buy when it 

comes to living through a situation you just aren’t sure you can survive, and then 

you do. That is personal growth you can’t measure on any chart. It’s much more than 

making a team or not making a team.

This is building a foundation. This is building from the inside out, the bottom 

up. This is preparing at it’s most basic, because if you don’t know who you are 

than no one will. So, my little pal, today is just for you, as painful as it may feel. All 

those other people around me don’t matter. All I see is you. And I know we’ve laid 

another brick in a pretty solid foundation!