Herron
I feel Tom Brady’s pain.
I don’t mean the pain his 44-year-old body must feel after spending 22 years being chased and hammered by huge men trying to knock him down and steal his football.
I mean the pain he obviously must feel being chased and hammered by Father Time, a relentless linebacker intent on knocking him down and stealing his onfield identity.
After all, since the day in 1991 when he was named backup quarterback for Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, California, Brady has been football and football has been Brady.
With retirement — even though he will remain widely regarded as the greatest quarterback of all time — that regard will be in the record books but no longer on the playing field.
Retirement means coping with changing the verb in one’s identity from “is” to “was.” Being Tom Brady in the stands is not the same as being Tom Brady on the field.
For at least the past two years, Brady has publicly struggled with changing that verb. Finally, in February he announced his retirement. Then on March 13 he changed his mind, saying he would return as quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for yet another season.
“These past two months I’ve realized my place is still on the field, not in the stands,” he told the world on his various social media accounts.
Why would a middle-aged man make such a decision — play one more season in a game that can leave even a player half his age debilitated for life? At this point in his multi-million dollar career, the reason cannot be fear of going on public assistance.
What he likely fears losing is the on-field identity that has defined who he is all his adult life. When a job that has defined him is gone, who is he?
Our parents usually start the process of telling us who we are. Then friends tell us, teachers tell us and, finally, our employers tell us. We generally believe the definition, and — if we are not careful and reflective — eventually become no more than the title listed in our personnel file or the position inscribed on our business cards.
That’s why I feel Tom Brady’s pain. I too have gone through the adjustment to retirement.
Although my life’s identity as a small duck in a tiny pond cannot compare with Brady’s time as a Killer Whale on the high seas, we both know the pain.
When I chose to retire from a decade of preparing to be a journalist followed by four decades of doing what I had prepared to do, I came home with no business cards to tell people who I was.
When I met people for the first time, they always began the conversation by asking me, “What do you do?” That was code for “who are you?” and, for the first time in more than 40 years, I had no card in my pocket with an imprinted title to give them (or me) either answer.
My temptation, at first, was to answer, “nothing and nobody.”
After a few months of discomfort, however, I saw enough humor in my lack of identity to have my own business cards printed. They just gave my phone number and listed me as “Bud Herron, Protagonist” — the main character in my own personal drama.
The cards signified I had been duped by life’s process. The titles I had been given in the company files and on my business cards really didn’t define me at all. Actually, they locked me inside someone else’s box.
Today, I am happier and feel more free to be myself than at any other time in my life. I have found other interests and abilities and places where I can feel fulfilled as a citizen of the world.
I no longer need that business card to tell me who I am and why I exist.
I hope Tom Brady gets to that point.
Brady undoubtedly can find other identities to free him, reward him and give him places to make the world a better place, without having to look in the mirror for the name on the back of his football jersey.
