REACTING AND RESPONDING

In an interview prior to the Steelers playoff game with the Ravens Steelers coach Mike Tomlin reflected on tough times during the football season. Left unsaid was that every team goes through them. No team goes unscathed. It is how teams deal with adversity that makes the difference between winning and losing. “Just recognizing that adversity is a part of football and sometimes the adversity is created by us…doesn’t matter. It’s part of football and you’ve got to respond to it, not react to it.”

He went on: “Reactionary is kind of without thought…Responding is with thought. I always talk about responding because I believe in it.”

Most of us do, I suspect, or at least we should. If we want to make the proper response to any situation that demands one, we want to make the correct one. To do that requires thought, sometimes a whole lot of thought. Some situations, of course, require more thought than others and thus it behooves us to give each situation the proper amount of time to think about what to do next.

Yet there are times in our lives – and even on a football field – when we do not have time to think about what a proper and thoughtful response should be. We have to act, react, and do so quickly. We have no other choice. We have to do something and we have to do it now. There is no time to think: just do.

Part of football and part of life is learning how to react and react quickly. That requires practice both in football and in life. During the practice times that lead up to the game, the coaches go over situations that may arise. They think about what the opponent can do and might do and they devise plays that will respond. And then they practice those plays, those responses, so that when the time comes during the game that those situations arise, the players can react correctly.

Sometimes, of course, those best laid plans simply do not work even if everyone acts as each was taught. They don’t because the other team has spent time thinking about how the opponent will react to their plays and then they devise something that will defeat the other team’s plans. Football is not just about physical skills or even one team being better than the other. It is about being prepared to make the correct response.

Again, the same is true in all of life, not just in the games we play. We, too, as human beings, especially as Christians, want to respond to every situation as our faith would have us. But we don’t always have the time to think about what to do. We have to react and hope and pray that our action is correct. Sometimes it isn’t. When it isn’t, as in a football game, we need to regroup, think about what we did wrong, learn from it, and trust we will respond better the next time.

Too many situations in life demand an immediate reaction. As in football so in life, learning from our mistakes, even unintended ones, make for the best teacher/responder/reactor.