Common Ground

Most years, life's biggest moments reach us at a distance. What do I mean by that? We hear about that thing that happened to a friend of a friend, a colleague in another team, a name in a message thread. This year, they have landed right at the centre of my world. Life-changing accidents and illnesses, bereavements, job losses and relationship break-ups have happened to the people I love, often within weeks of each other. These things happen every year, yet this year they have felt more numerous, closer to home and more concentrated, as if the hard news had decided to arrive together.

I have been part of that list. In May, I came out of football retirement for seven minutes at a tournament held in memory of our team's manager, and I left the pitch in an ambulance with my foot facing the wrong way. I wrote about that day in From the Ground Up, and about the long wait for surgery in Still on the Ground. Recovery is going well, and I'm walking without aid and with only a little pain. What a blessed feeling.

When I have spoken to the people closest to me, many of them have said similar things, often without any prompting. They are feeling it too. I really believe in confiding in someone and saying it out loud, because naming what we feel gives other people permission to name it too. I touched on this in The Self You Didn't Choose, where I explored Ubuntu, an African philosophy often translated as "I am because we are". It describes a person who is diminished when someone else suffers and enlarged when someone else flourishes. This year I have felt the truth of both halves of that.

Yet life has come closer in its most beautiful form as well. Three people close to me are expecting babies, all due within the same month, and for them it is magical. Sharing in their excitement has been a real joy, and holding that joy alongside so much loss has been a strange and humbling experience. I have come to see it as a matter of where I am standing. At this stage of life, my circle is old enough for illness and loss and young enough for births and new beginnings, all at the same time. We are standing in the middle of life's traffic, and it moves in both directions.

But I am now asking myself to answer this. When the less desirable aspects of life land this close, in all their forms, how do we keep moving forward while honouring everything that is happening?

Thicker ice together

I believe that life often takes us places where we'd rather not be, even though sometimes it's expected. A phone call, a scan result or a short meeting with the People Team can redraw the map in an afternoon. My first instinct in those moments is to resist, to replay what happened and wish for the life that existed the day before. That's not possible, but what I can do is respond to the challenge or incident rather than react to it.

Responding changes where my energy goes, away from what has already happened and towards what comes next. It is also far easier with other people beside me. When one person faces that moment alone, it can feel like they are on very thin ice. Counterintuitively, when we face it together, the ice becomes thicker and more solid, and there is enough strength beneath us to take the next step. For anyone grieving or going through a big change, remember that each step comes at its own pace, but every one of them counts.

So here are my lessons learned so far

The first lesson is more of a reminder than a lesson. It's a reminder that time is both precious and uncertain. Breaking my leg and watching friends and family face sudden illness and loss have made that impossible to ignore. Being unable to walk for a period forced me to slow down, and I chose to spend that time on what had been waiting for my attention, including the book I needed to finish. We never know how much time we are given, and we often forget that we also get to choose how fully we live the time we have. A good place to start is to name the top things that keep getting pushed aside, and give them the time they need.

The second lesson is that patience is an active choice. It means accepting what you cannot control while continuing to take purposeful action on what you can. When someone close to me was suddenly taken ill this year, every plan they had was put on hold overnight. They could not control how quickly their body recovered or when life would return to normal. What they could influence was their thinking, because thoughts shape feelings, feelings influence actions, and actions ultimately shape results.

The third lesson is that gratitude becomes more powerful when it is expressed, and more meaningful when it is turned into action. This year has made me look more closely at what I have, and I have discovered that the list is longer and richer than I had ever stopped to notice. I have family who love me, friends who show up, health that I no longer take for granted, and work that gives me purpose. Watching people I care about lose some of those things has made each one feel even more precious.

Gratitude sits alongside worry and sadness rather than removing them. On the hardest days, finding just one good thing can be enough to remind us that difficulty is only part of the story.

But gratitude kept to ourselves fulfils only half its purpose. We can express it through our words, by telling people what they mean to us and thanking them for what they have done, and also through how we give. Giving our time, attention, support or resources to someone else is a way of turning appreciation for what we have into something that can enrich another person's life. So I am naming, appreciating and sharing what I have, telling the people who make my life richer what they mean to me, and letting my gratitude be seen in what I say and in what I give.

Your story is still unfolding

Difficult news will keep arriving, and so will new beginnings, this year and every year. Some of it will land close. What we control is how we meet it, and whether we meet it alone. Soon, three new lives will arrive into a circle that has grieved and struggled so much this year. That joy will leave the losses in place, and the losses will leave the joy undimmed. Both belong to the same story, and that story is still ours to write.

Different stories, common ground.