Leading on the Forward Edge – At Home · Character Creates Opportunity® · Reflection: “Cheering from the Bleachers, Twenty Years Later”

A while back I wrote about cheering from the bleachers. That memory most of us carry of hearing someone yell our name across a field when we were eleven years old, and how much energy it gave us to keep going.

Here is the part I did not write.

The kids we cheered for are adults now. They are still playing. The games just moved.

They are playing on fields we cannot see and were never issued tickets to. A hard quarter at work where the numbers are not going to come in. A marriage going through a stretch nobody outside the house knows about. A diagnosis they have not mentioned to anyone, because mentioning it would make it real.

And here is the difference that ought to bother us. When they were eleven, there was a schedule on the refrigerator. Somebody knew where the game was, and the bleachers were full.

Now there is no schedule. Nobody knows where the field is. And most of the time, those bleachers are completely empty.

The same is true of our aging parents, who are quietly playing the hardest season of their lives while telling us everything is fine. It is true of a spouse who has been carrying something for months and stopped expecting anyone to notice. It shows up in the workplace, where the most competent person on the team is often the last one anyone thinks to encourage, and in our community, where we assume the family that always seems to be doing well must be doing well.

Grown people do not ask for encouragement. That is exactly why it is so needed.

We do not need to know what the game is in order to sit in the stands. Below are a few ways to get back in the bleachers and help share a boost of encouragement, just like the old days:

1. Cheer for who they are, not for what they pulled off. With small kids, encouragement was easy because there was a scoreboard. With adults, most of the important effort happens where there is no score at all; the hard conversation they had with an employee, the way they keep showing up for a friend, the fact that they have not quit. Send a text this week to a grown child or a sibling that names one thing about their character, not their results. "I have watched you handle a hard year without getting bitter about it, and I do not think you know how rare that is." No advice attached. No question at the end that puts work back on them.
2. Tell a parent the thing they are convinced we never noticed. Somewhere in our parents' minds is a running tally of the sacrifices nobody ever mentioned; the second job, the missed thing, the years of quiet worry. Most of them go to their grave assuming those went unseen. Pick one specific memory, the more ordinary the better, and tell them we remember it. Do it by phone rather than text, because they need to hear it in our voice, and do it this week rather than at the next holiday when there are twelve people in the room.
3. Say the encouraging thing to our spouse out loud, in front of somebody else. After enough years, the appreciation goes silent. Not because it stopped, but because we assume it is already understood. It is not. Say the specific thing at the dinner table where the kids can hear it, or to a friend while our spouse is standing right there. Something we admire about how they are handling this particular season, not a general compliment. It is a small thing that costs us nothing and gets remembered for months.

I want to be careful here, because I have been on the wrong side of all three. There were stretches when I was so occupied with my own field that I did not think to wonder what game anybody else was playing. Encouragement is a habit, and habits can be started at any age.

Nobody is going to hand us a schedule. There will be no announcement that someone we love is having the worst month of their year. We just have to decide to be the kind of person who sends something anyway, for no occasion at all.

As we send some cheering from the bleachers to the grown people playing on fields we cannot see, we will build and strengthen our character, and Character Creates Opportunity to give those we care about most the energy to keep moving forward.

If I were to ask you, "What is holding you back today from being your best for those you care about most?" what would you say?

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This reflection builds on an earlier Character Creates Opportunity® post: Cheering from the Bleachers.

Questions this reflection answers

How do I encourage my adult children?

Cheer for who they are, not what they achieved. Send a text that names one thing about their character, such as how they handled a hard year without getting bitter. Leave out advice and do not end with a question that puts work back on them. You do not need to know what they are facing to encourage them.

How can I show appreciation to my aging parents?

Pick one specific memory of a sacrifice they made, the more ordinary the better, and tell them you remember it. Do it by phone rather than text so they hear it in your voice, and do it this week instead of waiting for a holiday when the room is full of people.