Weaving The Dream

Oh no!  Not more football mania! 

I can just hear you moan.  But hey…I am the mother of three sons and my husband is a former Pittsburgher.  I’ll just have to be excused on the grounds of unavoidable indoctrination and defensive assimilation.

So…I watched most of the Super Bowl Sunday night with my husband. We knew that our two younger sons were also watching the game in their apartment in LA while our oldest son and his wife were watching the game in their home in Virginia just outside the nation’s capital where even President Obama was rooting for our team.

Usually, I hate watching the Steelers play because I am just not an adrenalin junky and, as their coach, Mike Tomlin said afterwards, Steelers football is never pretty–as they proved last night when it seemed all was lost until Santonio Holmes made a pass reception in the end zone that was unique.

And here’s the thing—as I watched the slow motion replay of his catch over and over, I watched his determination and his awareness of the ball and his position just this side of out-of-bounds.  I gaped at his self-control as he kept both feet on tiptoe firmly planted as he first caught the ball and then allowed himself to fall under a tackle. 

Since most of us would have instinctually moved one of our feet out to keep our balance, I admired Holmes’s ability to be so focused on what he needed to do that he could control his body’s own instincts. 

I thought, “Geez, that must have taken hours of training and preparation to be able to do that.”  Not to mention hours more experience of failing and succeeding to bring him and his team to this defining moment of success.

Here is a guy who sold drugs in high school to pay for shoes and clothes but who found something that was his heart’s passion—something he could give his all to in terms of commitment and work—to move him off of a path of self- destruction and on to a path of creative success and fulfillment. (And you can bet that, for Holmes, running and catching footballs is his form of creative expression.)

Holmes is very conscious of being a role model for young kids and their ability to move out of poverty and crime into a life of achievement.  What he probably doesn’t realize is that he is also a role model for creativity in three important ways:

1. Dream the impossible dream and then take action.  Holmes made the decision in high school that he didn’t want to spend his life standing on a street corner selling drugs.  He wanted something more…he wanted to play football.  So he stopped selling drugs and put his time and effort into playing on his high school football team, and then his college team.  And he did it so well that he was a first round draft pick for the NFL.
2. Be prepared and practice, practice, practice. Being successful creatively, whether we are writers, dancers (and Holmes appeared to have mastered ballet last night), singers, or painters, requires hours of consistent training.  That is, with rare exceptions, before we can move craft into art, before we can successfully express our ideas or visions, we first have to develop the necessary skills and techniques.  We know that Holmes spent hours in practice and preparation both on and off the field.  My mother was an artist in watercolor and colored pencils and in addition to years of schooling, every time she worked on a new painting or picture, she did study after study of the images in the picture.  She didn’t just sit down one day to paint and it was a success.
3. Be willing to fail in order to succeed. Holmes didn’t catch every pass made to him Sunday night.  But he didn’t give up and decide he couldn’t do the job when he missed a pass.  Instead, he believed in himself, and with 35 seconds left in the game, he asked his quarterback to trust him, to give him the chance to make the play.

I lied…there is one more important thing that Holmes did that we as artists and creatives need to do.  He put his whole being into making that catch.

Put your whole heart and soul into your work.  Create with passion and joy.

And then, when that work, like last night’s game, is over…

CELEBRATE!