Broken ribs, broken shoulder, fractured eye socket, scare tissue in an eye, chipped shin bone, dead tooth, cuts which I super glued closed, shattered knee cap, broken toes, and a few broken fingers including one tonight.
What on earth would make someone keep going back to a game that inflicts so much pain and has risk of injuries like these.
Simple...For the Love of the Game.
BTW, as I have 2 fingers tapped together tonight and typing with only my ring and pinky finger on my right hand and my figure is throbbing, but I planned a post tonight so here I am at 1am typing pecking away.
So back to the game, I don't think which game really matters if you have a something you love. But my passion is hockey. There is something about hockey that can't be explained to someone who never played it. I've played a lot of different sports, but none ever compared to hockey.
When you have something you are passionate about the pains and struggles don't really matter. Tonight I took a slapshot in an odd way and it hit on the underside of my glove straight on my middle figure. Knew it was bad as I couldn;t grip my stick. Went to the bench, looked at it and sure enough the finger was broken and on a pretty funky angle. I put my glove back on and went right back out there and played the next 32 minutes of the game in pain to support my teammates. The pain wasn't a factor because on that rink those are my brothers and you do what is needed to help your family.
See i know some of you think this is a little crazy, but the finger is nothing. I finished the game and played the rest of the weekend long tournament when I shattered my knee cap, then 2 or 3 days later went and we had playoffs and had 3 games that day for another team...I played them all.
To me dealing with a little...or a lot...of pain to do something I love is worth it and dealing with that pain to support my teammates is worth it. We don't get paid out there, but we all put everything we have into winning each game.
While this is about my love of hockey and what and the pain I'm willing to endure for the game it also applies to life, right?
When you are passionate about something you need to figure out how to make it happen no matter what. When you can do right by your family even if it's hard or it hurts you suck it up and push forward. When a friend is in need it doesn't matter if it's inconvenient, you just do it.
So many people complain about how hard this or that is, about how they don't have the same advantages as someone else, how they should get what others have without putting in the effort, and so forth...these people need to wake up and realize if they are breathing they have opportunity to help others and themselves.
Yesterday is your past and can't be changed, tomorrow is never guaranteed, but today you can make a choice to overcome something that has been holding you back, to push past some pain, to declare no more excuses.
Ok that might be the mix of beer and pain pills talking, but seriously we all have the same 24 hours and we each make choices each day on how to spend them. Are you doing the things you really want to be doing, and if not why? Don't feel the need to answer, I get this is personal but think about it.
Images are both from pixabay and are CC0 Creative Commons