I’m just happy to be here.
That phrase. A phrase I used to think of as a joke.
Growing up I was never a loud child. Never the one to put up a fit in Toys R Us. Never to disrupt my parents when they were driving. I was always careful with what I said or did. You could imagine that this attitude did not garner much attention from anyone. When coaches on my little league team tried to give the team a pep talk, they’d always asked a similar rhetorical question: “Why are you here?” followed by a bunch of bitching and moaning about how they didn’t have to be there because they already knew how to play the game. “Why are you here?” I never thought of answering that question out loud, but I remember constantly thinking to myself “Because my parents signed me up you annoying FUCK! I’m six years old why the FUCK would I want to waste my time developing skills in a game I cannot fully comprehend the rules to?” I’ve done about 20 different team things since then, and at one point or another the coaches always asked us that question rhetorically. Only once amongst those 20 different groups of coaches did one of them actually followup with something unexpected after the question.
I was in the fifth grade and one of the coaches was teaching us the basics of basketball. At the end of practice he seemed less than pleased with our performance. “I stay here everyday after school with you guys, trying to teach, trying to motivate, trying to make you guys FUCKING pay attention!” being that we were in the fifth grade the use of the word FUCKING by a “teacher” got our attention. “But I guess I’m wasting my time. Why are you here? Actually don’t answer that, I’ll tell you why. You, you just like to mess around with your knucklehead friends. You, you just like to waste my time. You, you seem like you actually want to try. You, you want to make something of yourself. You, your parents just want you away from the house as long as possible.” This went on for all fifteen players on our team, some hurtful, some inspiring, all we’re true and personalized, well almost all of them. When he got to me, I kind of stumped him, threw him a curve ball he wasn’t ready for. “And you!- well uhhh…… Well.. your just happy to be here aren’t you?” he finally said with a small smirk. I remember after he said that things got better. The tension in the room lightened, partially because it was funny how he said it. “your just happy to be here aren’t you?” I think everyone felt that relief because afterwards this serious conversation transitioned to the usual team chatter before being dismissed.
I remember after he said that to me I thought hard about what it meant. “your just happy to be here.” I used to wonder if he meant that I considered myself lucky to be part of the team. Or happy to be with my friends. Or maybe I was happy to play basketball. I thought it was some kind of joke I missed since he smirked after he said it. After a day or two I decided to drop it, and leave it to the idea that “He just had nothing bad to say about me so he left it at that.” Funny how kids can find justification in anything so it can make them feel better.
It wasn’t until years later that I thought about that statement again “your just happy to be here” I remembered, that on that team like in most activities in my life, I never really stood out good or bad. I was never the one getting all the praises. I was never the one getting reprimanded. I was never even told ways of improving my game. I was just there. Going through the motions. I look back on that, and on many aspects of my life, and I see many repeating examples of me just being happy to be there, happy to be going through the motions. Never striving for excellence, or improvement, always settling for mediocracy. Always letting the others get the attention, for you see that coach did not hesitate with me because he had nothing bad to say, but because he had nothing to say. I think at that moment he might have just become aware of my existence. He could’ve watched me shit on his desk and he would have wondered who the fuck I was. It kind of puts things in perspective for me, not the whole shitting on his desk thing, but the other stuff. The fact that I could live my entire life without making the slightest impact. Without giving someone the chance to say “Damn that motherfucker was awesome!” or “That guy really made a name for himself.” I want to make an impact. To be the guy who shits on people’s desk and they don’t wonder who the fuck it was, I want them to know who the fuck it was. I want them to come to my imaginative corner office with a view, and say “Hey I know that was you, I know you didn’t like the imaginative merger I purposed, and I know that when you don’t like something you stand out and take an imaginative shit on people’s desk, and I’m just saying you need to stop it.” in case you did not get the metaphor the shit is me making an impact, the merger is things that I maybe a part of that I normally keep quiet about in real life, and the guy, is someone actually noticing I’m not just going through the motions.
If you have read this far, I commend you sir, not many people would stay after all that rambling. This is my first and could be my only blog post, but it has a message, even if it might have gotten lost somewhere: stand out. I regret a big chunk of my childhood because I lived it normally. I was never extraordinary, terrible, or noticed in any way. So to you reader, no matter how old you are I offer you this advice, strive to be above average. To be noticed by all. To be louder and more impactful than the next guy. And don’t just be happy to be here.
