The Big Picture

 

There are two minutes left in the fourth quarter, and the salty taste of sweat dripping down my face is barely keeping me going. As I wait for the obnoxious buzzer of the scoreboard above, and that sweet taste of good ol’ victory, I line up in my position: the vicious linebacker position. Anticipating the discrete signal of the snap, the quarterback lines up right behind the big meaty center. I begin to inch my way closer, slowly, ready to fire my way through the gap and make the important play to truly wrap the game and achieve the long awaited victory. At last, the quarterback licks his lips and begins the count. I begin to shake, adrenaline racing through my veins, I am ready to attack.

“Ready!” he barks. “Set…Go!”

As the ball is snapped with haste, I shoot through the gap as the quarterback quickly drops into the pocket. Full speed ahead, low and quick as can be, I race towards him with all the power in me to make the tackle—the tackle to change possessions, the tackle to win the game. The quarterback sees me flying full speed towards him and he tucks the ball and races, scared and fast, for open field. I trail behind him, just a few inches away from winning the game.

Suddenly, their lineman crashes directly into my left leg. I scream as my knee dislocates and snaps back into place, tearing my meniscus and patellar tendon, shattering my knee cap and femur. I lay on the ground in shock, everything a blur: the clouds, my coach, and the paramedics who rush to the field. The paramedics question me, frantically asking how I feel and what hurts. “I don’t know,” I cry, trying to focus on their faces. “I was hit and felt my knee pop.”

I feel myself loaded onto a stretcher and brought to the hospital. I get X-Rays and MRIs and am forced to stay in the hospital overnight to have surgery the next morning. As I am to find out, this is the start of numerous knee surgeries to come.

At the age of 18, I have had four knee surgeries on the same knee in the span of four years, all throughout high school. I had grown up playing sports, which were my life. A minute without sports was unbearable. My top priorities in life were family, academics, and most of all, athletics–until I injured my knee a third time, leading to my fourth surgery. I have come to the tough and truly treacherous realization that sports are now out of the picture, and that that way of life, my old life, is over. Something that I had loved and held dearly in my heart had been ripped out and shredded right in front of me. I have never truly felt so much pain.

I had always lived in the present—never the past, and never the future. Not until this point in my life had I realized the importance of the future, my future, and the big picture. As I begin to see the big picture, I see the way my life and my list of priorities have changed for the better. Athletics have been wiped off that list. Athletics are now a mere speckle on the large spectrum of my life. For the rest of my life, academics and family are my true priorities, all because of the change I made—looking to the future, and seeing the big picture. I believe in seeing the big picture. This I believe.