Joy: The Hardest Emotion

It’s a bit funny. I’ve been thinking about the prompt of “joy”, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the angle I wanted to take on it.

I’ve been wrapped up in a lot of emotions lately: frustration, determination, excitement, and perhaps a bit of despair.

I’m on the path I know I’m meant to be on right now. So why is joy not on that list?

I spent a bit of time exploring the topics of winning and losing the other day. It was after yet another Crew game ended in a draw. And these draws have been weird, because they felt like both wins and losses at the same time. The team is good; probably the most talented team we’ve had in Columbus, ever. Many of the draws were captured by overcoming adversity. Going down a man or down a goal, playing in a hostile environment, the opponents determined to foul us to knock us off our game. Everything seemed to be stacked against us.

I’ve seen teams break down from way less. But this team didn’t break. In fact, if anything, they seemed to get stronger with each bit of adversity they faced.

The coach of the team is going to be a legend. Not just here; honestly, I think he’s already there after just over a season. Winning a title in your first season in town with a team that had missed the playoffs the 2 years before will do that. I’m almost certain he is going to be coaching at the highest levels of the game.

He is a master of psychology in addition to tactics. He talks a lot about “being brave”, not fearing mistakes, welcoming pressure. He wants his team to play up to the biggest moments, playing their game whether home or away. And he expects his team to adhere to the high standards he sets for them.

And it doesn’t matter who the player is. He benched our star player for two games for a violation of team rules., one of them being a huge home match against a Mexican team.

A lot of fans were seething, especially since no details were given. It was a team issue, it was dealt with internally, and the coach and the player knew the details; nobody else needed to know, so they didn’t. Simple as that.

That resulted in a draw and had us needing to go down to Mexico and get a result if we wanted to advance.

This was something that no US team had been able to accomplish: winning a two leg series against a Mexican team after not winning the home leg.

The game started in the worst possible fashion: we gave up a goal in the first 5 minutes when our young goalie misplayed the ball and gave them a tap in. They almost scored again minutes later.

I’ve seen this story before: down in Mexico, teams collapse under the weight of the moment. We’ve been knocked out many times that way. But this team is simply built differently.

They sustained the pressure and we absorbed it. And then we got the crucial game tying goal. That took us into extra time, and then on to penalty kicks. The goalie, after giving up the early goal, made two incredible saves, and we advanced. Still technically a draw, but also one of the biggest wins in club history.

After he led the team to the championship last year, the coach said he had told the players all season: “Impossible is an opinion.”

When the team was walking off the field after the shootout, down in a hostile environment, I saw something that I wouldn’t have ever believed possible.

There were a number of opposing supporters applauding the Crew. There was a level of respect for our team that has never existed before. They play a beautiful game of soccer, with lots of quick passing, fluid movement, and incredible vision. And it doesn’t matter whether they are home or away. They stick to their game and make their opponents adapt to them.

It’s a version of soccer that all fans of the game appreciate. But to come out and do that against a team that has a much bigger budget and what most would consider higher caliber players at almost every position, well, that’s simply impossible, right?

“Impossible is an opinion.”

Last night, I had the pleasure of watching us win a game for the first time in almost 2 months. Again, in the continental cup, again playing against a strong Mexican team. In the last round, this Mexican team demolished the team with some guy named Leo Messi. Maybe you’ve heard of him?

It wasn’t unlike the Crew’s match, they needed a result on the road. They gave up an early goal. But they collapsed. Even having one of the top players in the world wasn’t enough to save them from that fate.

The Crew isn’t done yet. They still have to go play on the road. It’s a better situation than last time, they’ve got a lead after the first leg this time. But it’s still going to be tough. I don’t know how it will play out, but I’ve got nothing but love and respect for this team.

Ok, so back to joy.

When I was looking for ideas related to winning and losing, I saw these quotes:

So, losing feels worse than winning feels good, and it feels worse longer than feeling good does after winning.

In my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve been focusing a lot on embracing the suck. In the words of Elon Musk, being an entrepreneur is like “chewing glass and staring into the abyss”. That approach is helpful when it comes to overcoming the losses; early on, there are a lot of them. In fact, I’ve embraced losing in this sense, because that means I’ve learned something important. But in this state of embracing losses, I think I’ve forgotten how to win.

Even in the losses, there are wins. That means there is joy to be found in the abyss.

It’s important to find that joy. The joy can come from playing the beautiful game you are meant to play. Playing that game in spite of the adversity you face. Being brave.

There’s a lot of joy in doing the impossible.

Because after all, impossible is just an opinion.