Why Some of Us Never Learned to Tell Danger from Calm

I've been in a bit of mourning lately. Ever since the World Cup ended, I must admit I've felt a little lost with what to do with my time. It was a joy having it feel close this year, watching the crowds with flags and flares, hearing the horns beeping, and getting to go to a game with my son.

So forgive me for running with a soccer illustration, and for calling it football.

There will be different opinions on this, but I think what separates a top player from an average one comes down to this: the ability to see beyond yourself. Head down, eyes only on the ball, and you're easy to read. Easy to tackle. Predictable. What the best players do (Messi does this, the whole Spain team does this) is scan. They know where they are, where the goal is, where their teammates are, all before the ball even reaches them.

I've been trying to teach this to some ten-year-olds. I coached my son's team this past year. Some days it's like herding cats. Other days, when it clicks, it's fun to watch.

One of the things we work on is how the boys talk to each other on the pitch. Football is a talking game. The kids who don't communicate, who just run and hope, miss things. They get caught flat-footed. They leave their teammates isolated.

So we teach them a few phrases.

The first pair of phrases gets shouted to whoever has the ball: time, and man on. Two different calls, shouted by someone who can see an angle you can't. Time means you're free: look up, you've got space, you've got a second to pick out a pass or go for a run. Man on means danger is close and you need to act now. Every player needs to know, in any given moment, which one is actually true.

The second pair is shorter, just a word or two each: here, and if you need. Here means give it to me, I've got space, I'm your option right now. If you need is quieter: I'm not asking for it, but I'm around if it goes wrong. Both are just ways of letting a teammate know they're not alone out there.

I've been thinking about how much this maps onto ordinary life for a lot of men.

When your alarm never turns off

Some of us grew up in homes, or went through years, where things were unpredictable enough that the nervous system stopped being a reliable narrator. It learned to assume man on even when nothing's actually wrong. The alarm is always going. You're always a little braced. Head down. Everything narrows to one thing in front of you: the next deadline, the next drink, the next distraction, whatever keeps the feeling at bay. It's exhausting to live like that, and most men who live like that don't have a name for it. They just think this is what being an adult feels like.

For some, that head-down focus is addiction, fixed on the next fix. For others it's overwork, or a short fuse, or the particular numbness of scrolling until midnight because sitting still feels dangerous. Different shapes, same underlying problem: you've lost the ability to look up, to tell time from man on for yourself. You need someone, or something, to say: you've actually got space here. You can put it down for a second.

But there's a second failure that's just as costly, and it gets talked about far less. Missing the man on that's actually there. The resentment that's been quietly building. The isolation creeping back in. The small dishonesty you told yourself didn't matter. The pressure you didn't name until it was already sitting on your chest.

Most men I talk to are better at bracing for danger than they are at noticing it when it’s real.

Taking stock

There's an old way of thinking that says this isn't solved by one dramatic turnaround. It's daily. Small, unglamorous maintenance. Some call it taking inventory. Others do it through journalling, or meditation. We could call it taking stock, but really it's just an honest look at where you actually are, often enough that it doesn't quietly pile up behind you. Many of us know we're carrying something. We've just been too busy to look at what it actually is.

I've started doing something like this in the evenings. Nothing formal. Just a few minutes trying to see the day as it actually was, not as I wish it had gone, not as I'm bracing for. Where did I feel like myself today. Where did I drift. Where did I feel alive. What made me feel dead. Where did I feel connected to others. What's true that I haven't said out loud yet, even to myself.

This isn't scorekeeping. Not a ledger of failures. Just enough honesty to put something down before it turns into something else I need to walk around with. And practically, selfishly even, I sleep better on the nights I do it.

Most men don't do this. Not because they're avoidant, but because nobody ever showed them what it looks like, or why it might matter.

You're not playing this alone

Taking stock only gets you so far when you're the one doing the looking. There's a limit to what you can see about yourself, by yourself. Not because you're not looking, but because you're the one who's had to get used to living with it. The man on that you've stopped noticing isn't hiding from everyone. It's hiding from you.

That's why a good friend can feel like a teammate, or even a coach. As can a decent marriage. Or a sponsor. Someone you check in with often enough that they can say the thing you can't see for yourself. A counsellor does the same work, just more deliberately, on a schedule, without you having to wait until it's obvious. Different versions of the same idea: nobody reads the whole pitch by themselves. Not even the best ones. So we listen for the call.

The whistle blows eventually, on every match. You take stock, you let go of what you can, and you rest.

Tomorrow, you get to play again. Hopefully with your head up this time, and someone close enough to hear you when you call.