The Thing

My son is just over 6’10 and he hates basketball. How much fatherly despair can fit in one sentence, I wonder? Far more than is good or healthy or sane, to put it mildly. Right around the time he passed his dear old dad in height (I think he was eight or nine) and it became obvious that his height might just confer an athletic advantage or two, said dad began to invest considerable and wildly disproportionate emotional energy into his son’s sporting pursuits. Basketball, obviously. Volleyball. Hockey, for a short time. Football, as middle school gave way to high school. Without exception, my son’s interest in these sports failed to even come close to his father’s. His general approach to sports could be summed up in a word. Actually a lonely syllable would suffice. Meh.

A good father would evaluate his son’s dispositions and interests and wisely and maturely say something like, “Oh well, I guess sports aren’t his thing” and move on. Sadly, my son was stuck with me instead. I would agonize over his every tryout, practice, and game. I would lament his evident disinterest in exploiting his size. Don’t you realize what a massive advantage your height is? I would say, the desperation dripping off my pleading lips. Just work on your cardio a tiny bit and you will dominate! Don’t you realize how many kids would kill to have your height? Why can’t you be more aggressive?! You could get every rebound if you’d just take charge! On and on and on it went. I would live and die over his every athletic venture. I had visions of scholarships and awards and a glorious future of athletic conquest. His height would be the ticket to superstardom—for him and, far more importantly, for his heroic father.

Over at Mockingbird, Jordan Griesbeck recently wrote a piece called “Thou Shalt Have a Thing” which sort of stopped me in my tracks (it’s worth reading to the end). Even though my son is now twenty-two and we are no longer immersed in the drama of youth sports, the article was indicting on a number of levels. He begins thus:

“Sloane is our smart one.”
“Jack is our athlete.”
“Peter is our musical one. He plays violin … guitar… and piano.”

There is an unrelenting pressure felt by every parent: the pressure to find your child’s Thing.

That Thing could be baseball, ballet, horseback riding, hockey, table tennis, good grades, getting into a “good” college, trumpet, trombone, tuba, debate team, chess club. It doesn’t matter; there are as many Things as there are things. What matters is your child having some identity marker which separates them (and you) from the pack, which they (and you) can display to the world, and which grants them (and you) a Reason For Living.

Those parenthetical “and you’s” near the end of the quote can hardly be overemphasized. At least in my case, it is clear with the benefit of a few years of hindsight and a very wise and long suffering wife, that my attitude toward my son’s sporting career had way more to do with me than him. Yes, part of my mania had to do with longing for him to find somewhere to belong and to make good friends, yes, I genuinely wanted him to find something he was good at to build self-esteem and confidence, and, yes, like so many other parents, I certainly saw the value of sports in keeping kids out of trouble. But if I’m honest, it was mostly about me. 6’8 grade 10 kids don’t exactly grow on trees. I spied the possibility of sporting domination and was hungry for some parasitic glory.

I also think that Griesbeck nails it in the last sentence of that quote. We are desperate for a Reason For Living. This is embarrassing to admit as a pastor who gets up every Sunday and proclaims the grandest narrative of meaning there could be for a human life, but the narrative of my child as a vehicle for sporting glory far outshone the narrative of my child as an image-bearer of God, created, redeemed, deeply loved, and carrying the promise of eternity. I might say that the latter narrative is the more important truth about any human life, and certainly my son’s life, but my actions and attitudes far too often told a different story.

I don’t think I’m alone here. It would not be hard to interpret the zeal with which many parents approach their kids’ sports these days as evidence that they (and we) are desperate for a Reason For Living. Someone told me last night that parents are now forking over upwards of fifteen thousand a year for their kids to play AAA hockey. Fifteen grand! Many parents are travelling two or three out of four weekends a month, absorbing huge hotel and restaurant bills, in the pursuit of kids’ sports. There are innumerable club teams for kids to be involved in long after the school sports season is finished. Indeed, for many kids, a single sport is often now a year-round commitment (which is leading to no small amount of burnout for kids!). Thou shalt have a thing. And thy parents shalt make it so!

It should go without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that I am casting no aspersions on parents in the preceding. I am looking squarely in the mirror. If my son would have shown any interest in basketball, I would have followed him to the ends of the earth. I absolutely think that athletics is one area (among many others) where we can make the most of the gifts that God has given. And God knows how hard it is to raise kids in the digital age. If sports can untether them from their devices for significant chunks of time and make them more physically active and healthy, then, well, who could reasonably object?

But I do wonder if our (my) obsession with kids and their sports betrays something of a crisis of meaning in our culture. Even among Christians, who say all the right things about where our identity comes from and what secures it, there is a strong temptation to turn our kids and their sports into idols. Indeed, in the blasted-out landscape of the post-Christian West, where capital “M” meaning has disappeared and all we are left with are the little “m” meanings that we can construct for ourselves, we can (and do) turn pretty much anything into our Reason for Living. Politics, education, how we’re perceived on social media, kids, sports. The options are virtually limitless. But they are all doomed to fail. They cannot fill the deepest need for meaning that we have. They were never designed to.

My son once told me that he should walk around with a T-shirt that says, “Yeah, I know I’m tall. I’m 6’10 and, no, I don’t play basketball.” It would save time, he said, so frequently does he find himself having that same conversation over and over again. It’s funny, but, again, with the benefit of hindsight and perhaps a tiny glimmer of accumulated wisdom, it’s also kinda not funny. Because of course my son is much more than his height, and he is much more than the chutes through which tall people are squeezed in the public imagination. He is kind and has a wicked sense of humour. He is musically gifted and creative in ways that I can barely fathom. He has (and has always had) a soft spot for the outsider, the one who doesn’t fit, the one who is rarely praised or noticed, the one who might not have an obvious “thing.” Which, you know, a pastor dad might consider praising a bit more often than he does.