Soccer makes a team player of you, a person who sees that personal success depends on others being healthy and well - politicians could learn a thing or two from that.
Soccer was the song of my youth, my anthem, the kicking rhythm of my heart.
Those days of soccer training, especially the wintry ones that bore frost and ice upon grass and earth, were fun in their own way and also challenging because of the effort, the chill, the endurance required. At the time I never realised what golden moments they were, win or lose, it was about being together and feeling supported. That's what mattered. And so now I take that old memory and use it as my flashlight, showing me what is golden in the here and now so that I can enjoy it all the more.
Soccer wasn't all orange segments and cheering parents, mostly it was where we learned the grit to carry on and be more than the machine builds us to achieve.
Soccer was cold early starts and mud in places nobody mentions, and I loved it. It became woven into the fabric of who I am.