Obstacles

Legendary Chuck Norris once said, “I've always found that anything worth achieving will always have obstacles in the way and you've got to have that drive and determination to overcome those obstacles on route to whatever it is that you want to accomplish.” What this quote is saying is that anything that you want to accomplish will have obstacles and you have to have the will to overcome them. I, too, have set goals for myself and had to face obstacles to complete them. People have to face many obstacles in their lives such as losing friends due to excessive videogame playing, losing the best player in the town soccer team right before the big season, and recovering from someone you have lost; these obstacles have helped me because they shaped the way I am today; it showed me the value of friendship, it made me a better soccer player, and it helped me see the true meaning of life. To start things off, I was excessively playing videogames and choose the videogames over my friends. Due to my excessive video game playing I lost most of my friends. Sometimes my friends would come to my house and ask if I can come outside and play football, but I simply rejected the offer and went back to videogames. It was as if he never asked me. After a few weeks I began to notice that none of my friends were talking to me. I started to wonder why and then it hit me. I was too busy playing videogames to play football with my friends which made our friendship grow apart. Since I noticed this I decided to put a limit on how much videogames I could play in one day, attach a shock pen to my controller so when I touched it the controller shocked me, and vow to play football with my friends instead of videogames. After I put my plan into action, all my friends started to talk to me again. The plan also helped me become a better athlete. This life changing obstacle taught me that friendship should be valued more than videogames and almost everything. Stopping myself from playing too much videogames had help me become a better athlete, but there is another obstacle that helped me excel even further as an athlete, more specifically a goalie for the Monroe Township Soccer Club. That very important obstacle is when the best player on the Monroe soccer travel team left right before the “big season.” His tragic departure has killed our chance at winning the season, or so I thought. As soon as he left the coach held twice as many practices so that we would overcome our lost player. Instead of one or two practices per week we had three to four practices per week. Although the back breaking practices beat the team up, in the long run we benefitted a whole lot. Before we had scheduled more practices we thought the season would be a blow out, but at our first game we were all dragons and our opponents were like damsels in distress except they weren’t going to get saved by a knight in shining armor. I stopped keeping track of the score when we scored our sixth goal. We scored so many goals that the referee made our team make frequent substitutions so that we score less often, but even though the ref did this it barely helped. As my whole team experienced, although no offense to our best player, we were better off with him leaving than him staying. My team’s skill level increased tenfold after he left. Obviously my team benefitted from this obstacle.

One final example of an obstacle that, in my opinion, is probably the hardest obstacle everyone will ever face is recovering from losing a loved one. Unlike losing you best soccer player, this is a very emotional and touchy subject. When I lost my great grandmother I went into a state of depression. I wasn’t taking care of myself like I used to and I didn’t really care about school. For example, I would normally eat a horse, more like an elephant, at dinner, but instead I took maybe a few pieces and that was it. Losing my great grandmother really got me digging into the deepest part of my mind about when my time will come. After a few weeks I decided to pick myself up and place myself back on my feet. With each passing day I found it easier to take of myself because each day I thought less and less about the tragedy and when I would go to the other side and more and more about the good times we had together. I started to listen and follow to the quote “live each day as if it were your last” because I would never know when I would be next. My depression, recovery, and precious memories helped me see the true meaning of life. Losing people have been my downfall on more than one occasion. Losing people has hurt my social status, my team, and my heart. Although they have all been hard obstacles in the long run they all have been beneficial to me. They all have shaped who I am today. Everyone in the world has to have faced an obstacle similar to the obstacles I have mentioned. I bet that if everyone just every so often stopped what they were doing and thought about good memories, went to hang out with a friend, or helped out their team, peers, or coworkers the world would be a better place. I also believe if everyone did this there would be less depression in the world and more long-lasting friendships. Just imagining a world like that just seems impossible because of the mixed up world we live in today. I just wish with all my will power that this world that I am picturing in my mind is achievable and will be achieved with time.