All Or Nothing

Someone once said, ~Life is like soccer. If there's no goals, its just playing around with friends. But as soon as goals appear, the people become your enemy, and the other half are just co-workers.~ As said before, life like the game of soccer where we're all, in a sense, kicking a soccer ball that represents certain aspects such as friendship, professional ambitions, and most definitely matters of the heart. For it's a tough situation indeed to not only handle the proverbial soccer ball of life, but be able to stay focused knowing opposing forces are/will be standing in your way as you set your sights in trying to all intensive purposes kick your professional, as well as personal ambitions/aspirations/goals into the net of success.

Without a doubt, life is much more interesting and not to mention entertaining when you have your close personal friends by your side running up and down with you on the soccer field of life. Each of them initially play the following dual roles or should I say positions that test how strong the cohesive unit of friendship you inevitably share with people who aren't just considered teammates as they're also considered to be family. Essentially, in your group of friends you have wingers who help you in a supportive way by setting up perfect or close to perfect targets giving you the opportunity to take your shot(s). Thinking about it, you can't have wingers without having defenders who prevent anything from happening to you when you're knowingly or unknowingly in danger of being hurt. Tell me, do you have friends like the ones mentioned above?

If you think about it, when it comes to the soccer game of life you push yourself like never before, especially involving the professional working world. It's truly competitive in the real world and it's certainly a challenge in itself to metaphorically have the ball, run with it, and then unfortunately drop it, so to speak, during or so close to the end of your professional journey as you made a costly mistake or several costly mistakes. We've all heard the saying no guts no glory and it's a true statement because if you don't give 110% of your blood, sweat, and tears by aggressively going for the offensive towards the goal your kicking straight for you're never really going to know if you left everything of yourself or nothing at all on the field. What it primarily comes down to is working through the mental/physical pain you know you're going to endure all-the-while refusing to quit because you're hurt and tired.

Let me ask you this question to those who play or used to play soccer, how many of you put in the effort by practicing and working hard in order to be THE best or one of the best players on your team? You see, it's that same work ethic that should be implemented in a significant relationship where you work hard to use the skills that help make the two person team both of you developed together a force to be reckoned with that can't be beat. Commitment, communication, trust, faith, honesty, loyalty, security, intimacy, caring, understanding, tenderness, compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, respect, etc. are the skills you continue to learn to use every day with someone you absolute love, which is something you're not a master at and if you think you are then you're totally deluded.

In retrospect, in the soccer game of life you either play by the rules or you don't. For some, most or all people, they played by the rules and at times got in trouble, whereby receiving a simple slap on the wrist in the form of a yellow card giving them a clear warning not to do it again. However, for others they broke the rules countless times leading them to receive a red card in which their punishment consisted of serving time in jail or prison. In any case, whether it's friendship, work, and/or love you work your butt off showing you're taking it very seriously. In the end, the soccer game that is life you go by an all or nothing mentality because if you're not in it to win then it's time to take yourself out of the game and go home.