My son crosses the parking lot, his face stormy, his body language screaming “NO, I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT IN THE CAR, MOTHER”.
His high school soccer team has just played their arch rivals, a team that they haven’t beaten in almost a decade. His team scored first and led 2-1 for most of the game, letting us all get a dangerous taste of hope. Then the other team scored with just over three minutes left in the game and I remember that it’s the hope that kills you. As a fan, it was a heartbreaker to watch them get so close to winning and then having it end in a tie; I know how badly they wanted this win.
As a mom, I also knew how much my son had been hoping to play in this game, his first at the varsity level against this team. But he, and a handful of other players, never made it off the bench as the coach made very few substitutions over the course of the game.
It was a double dose of being tantalizingly close to real joy but falling short. He made the team, but didn’t get to play. They didn’t lose to their rivals, but they didn’t win either.
I think of this as the better than average curse.
My son is, in ways that are particularly relevant in his life right now, quite a bit like me. We are both extroverts, we are both highly competitive, we both enjoy the spotlight and being in charge. We want, so badly, to do well at the things we care most about and for other people to perceive us as good great at the those things. We are willing to work hard to be better and we not-so-secretly love it if we that means we are working harder than other people… as long as we get the pay off getting better and getting closer to being great at something.
It’s that last bit where the trouble starts.
For most of my life, I have wanted to be truly great at something. At anything, really.
When I was a kid, I kept hoping that one day I would stumble into something and discover that I was secretly a child prodigy. I was a shy kid who wasn’t particularly impressive in school, though some of my teachers loved me. I got recommended to test for the gifted and talented program, but didn’t make the cut off to actually get in. I wasn’t good at most school sports, I wasn’t musical, I wasn’t artistic. I was very, very good at reading but there wasn’t any real social benefit to that, no prize to win other than a Pizza Hut pan pizza (the actual best).
I was mostly unremarkable but harbored a hope through most of my elementary school and middle school years that I had some sort of preternatural talent that just hadn’t been discovered yet.
In high school, I got better at most of the things that mattered to me. But I continued to never, ever be the best at anything. I was in the top 10% of my class, but not one of the 18(!!) valedictorians my senior class had1 that year. After years of working my ass off in the pool, I finally made varsity for the swim team and my senior year actually qualified for state in two events. The top 20 swimmers in each event made it to state. I qualified 19th in one event and 20th in the other. I wrote for the school newspaper but wasn’t the editor. I got admitted to all the colleges I applied to (but didn’t apply to any that were highly selective) and even got flown in for an in-person interview for a full-ride scholarship at one of them. I didn’t get it, but they liked me well enough to add another $3000 on to the second best scholarship they offered.
Being better than average meant that, along the way, I got to spend time with the people who were actually the best. I swam the same workouts as them, took the same AP classes, went to the same awards ceremonies. Sometimes I knew I was working harder than they were and that alternately comforted me and infuriated me.
It always broke my heart more to be closer to being the best than to knowing I never had a shot.
My son and I talk about his soccer feelings and how hard it can be to not be as good as you want to be at something you love. I remind of the fact he’s gotten so much better at soccer in the last few years and try to help him find joy in the process of getting better but I know he wants the chance to shine in front of a crowd. His high school’s soccer team is also above average this year and he notes that if he played on one of the weaker teams in the conference, he’d probably be a starter.
He’s not wrong, but I remind him that one of the reasons he’s gotten better as a player is by practicing daily with good players. I ask him if he’d rather be the best player on a mediocre team or the worst player on a great team and he chooses option #1.
I consider hitting him with a platitude, maybe a little old “iron sharpens iron” but then I remember feeling the same way when I was in high school. My high school had very strong sports teams and our swim team regularly won the conference. I remember scanning the newspaper for meet results from other schools and realizing that my 4th place time for my team would have been a 1st place time for another school and wrestling with my competing feelings of pride and jealousy. I could have been seen as great… over there. But I got faster, staying put. Did I want to be the best swimmer I could be or just better than everyone else? Did I want to get faster or win more races, get more glory?
Well, yes. To all of it, please.
I have the advantage of several decades of wisdom over my son. It’s one of the reasons I do triathlons - I am well below average there and so there is no danger of hoping I can win, so I can just feel the pleasure of trying hard and doing a little better every year. I’ve learned how to better manage my competitive streak, to be grateful for what I have, to set goals I can reach without having to beat other people to get there.
And yet…
When I turned 40, I didn’t have a lot of angst about it except for the tiny part of me that realized I’d never make anyone’s “forty under 40 list”, like my beloved friend Melissa did. I’m not going to be the wunderkind writer with a debut novel on the best seller list and an interview scheduled with NPR. I still struggle with jealousy even when I am grateful as hell for my job, my family, my friends.
I should note that there is a long, long list of things that I am well and truly below average at: I suck at dancing, at reading maps and understanding directions, I’m the slowest runner, I can’t carry a tune, I’m not particularly good at decorating and I’m on the record for being the least handy person alive.
While I wouldn’t mind being better at any or all of these things, they don’t break my heart like the things that I’m actually good at do.
I keep having to accept the fact that I can’t hard work my way to greatness, especially if I keep defining greatness as public acclaim and endless praise.
The week after the soccer game, my son starts staying late after practices, running drills by himself as the sun goes down. The next game comes and he gets off the bench for a few minutes and I breathe a little easier for him.
I get a sweaty hug when he comes off the field and I think to myself that at least I can be great at being this kid’s mom, even if there aren’t any rankings lists to prove it.
The school implemented weighted grades the next year because I don’t think anyone wanted to sit through that many valedictorian speeches ever again.