Happiness Does Come in a Box

The last few weeks at work have been tough.  I'm not going to sit here and deny that it doesn't affect my mood outside the office and my effectiveness as a coach.  Shoot me, I'm human.  There were many a practice I walked into worn down, beat up, and exhausted.  You do what you can to keep the two worlds separate  but sometimes that just doesn't happen - Mr. Hyde overstays his welcome.

But then, you take a couple steps into that 84-foot by 50-foot hardwood box and all the pain, misery, anger, frustration disappears.  The world seems to stop.  The problems of the day - the angry calls, the nasty emails - all fade to nothing.  All that matters is my little space of happiness, my 84' x 50' box of joy.  Losing, winning, playing well, whatever, it doesn't matter.  All that matters is I'm free. I'm happy.  It's a remedy.  Back in the day, we'd call it my "anti-drug" (raise your hand if you even remember those commercials), and it is one thing that keeps me from going over the edge and getting consumed by all the "bad" of the workweek.

That's the feeling I am hoping that my boys get one day.  For some it may be tomorrow, for others it will be next year, two, three, six years later.  But I hope that one day, they too realize that happiness could be found in a simple little box with a tiny ball.  They too will find that place that they can go to when the entire world decides to just beat them down and feel invincible.  And I hope that when they sit down, maybe not to blog as I have, but to just recall the simple things that make us happy, that I'll be among the list of people they attribute that feeling to.  This season I'm working with a local high school student who used to play in the program and he recalls his 5th grade basketball season like it was yesterday. He always tells the team how those moments that made him so happy and ultimately brought him back to help now.  His coach that trusted in him, helped him grow and inspired him.  One day, I hope I'll be included in that list for a child, and that will inspire him to do the same.

Okay, so this post was a little on the sappy side. I just needed to put it out there. I think a lot of times that people see me on the sidelines demanding more every play, every minute and maybe feel like I'm some madman - always angry.  But I'm not.  I'm quite the opposite.  And one thing I can tell you from my experiences, the people I've been around - the best coaches are the ones who find that little piece of happiness on the court too.