Assassins

In the 1995 movie Assassins, Bain (Antonia Banderas) is commissioned to kill the world's #1 Assassin, Rath (Sylvester Stalone).  As the story unfolds, Rath goes to a bank to withdraw this life's earnings (Bank of the Grand Cayman?) and retire.  As Luck (Fate? Poor screen-writing?) would have it this is the same bank that his predecessor was leaving 10 years prior when he killed him to become the world's #1 Assassin.  This is where Bain sets up to take the title...

I bring this up because life is filled with these role reversals - the child becomes a parent, the student becomes a teacher, the athlete becomes a coach.  As a coach, it continues to amaze me how often the exact same situations arise from when I was an athlete, but now I'm in the opposite role.  Like many before me, my knee jerk reaction is to act just as my coaches did, to repeat history.  But if I give myself an extra minute or sometimes just a second, I can do better.  See I have a secret ability - I am a man.  While that implies many things (like never needing to ask for directions, ability to fix anything, and naivety to take all conversations at face value), what I intend it to mean here is that I have never grown up.  For all intents and purposes I have unlimited access to a wormhole that takes me back to 1995 (really anytime from 1988 - 2003).  It's as if my left big toe is always sticking through this wormhole and any time I need to; I can do a side lunge back through and FEEL what it's like to be 15 again.  With all the raging hormones, the thoughts, the motivations.  I can be young, skinny, and scar free.  In this way I can figure out how better to react to these current 15 year olds and take appropriate action (and in a small way do penance for past transgressions).  This is one way I am a student of history - my own personal history - and how I learn from the past.

But I must always remember to give myself that extra time to reflect - to use the wormhole!