Without The Mask
“Hi I’m a hockey player, but I’m here to play golf today”
Hockey was so much more than just a sport to me. It was a way of life, a way to define myself, my identity. From a young age, I had dreams of lifting the Stanley Cup overhead in an NHL jersey. I spent my life developing into a hockey player, working to make reality match up with that vision.
Deciding to commit to such an ambitious goal leaves room for little else. The competition to achieve that dream is so fierce, with so many challenges to overcome that it takes everything you have. It takes total commitment to a singular pursuit. It takes you. You eat, sleep and breathe the sport until it becomes who you are. But it also gives. It gives you purpose. Clarity. I could see where I wanted to go clearly in my mind, I had visualized that place a million times. There was always an overarching theme and objective driving me forward. Committing so fully led to experiences that remain dreams for most.
Each step along the way embedded this identity deeper. In hockey, I found structure, routine, a predictable peer group each year with teammates. Everything was planned out and taken care of, team meals, travel arrangements. It becomes a lifestyle, your stall in the arena like a second home. It gave life a constant rhythm, and I was most alive while on the ice. In my gear and behind the mask, I became something other than myself. I didn't need to speak. My actions spoke for themselves. I grew to love the pressure, to thrive in the spotlight.
Hockey was my chance to break free of mediocrity, to be something more than an average person. It's exhilarating, playing in front of thousands of people, your name proudly on the back of your jersey. All the feedback you get reinforces this identity of being something bigger. You're praised, taunted, yelled at, booed. This is magnified as a goaltender, and you learn to develop thick skin. The character you create to deal with this blurs reality until it's hard to separate. If you identify with the success and admiration, you must by the same thinking identify with failure and disappointment. You don't recognize the risk of losing yourself to the irrational and fluctuating opinion of others. You have to distinguish what lies in your control, hold yourself to an internal standard of excellence, and decide you are neither your successes or failures. It’s not easy or conventional, but necessary if you want to avoid the inevitable fall that comes from identifying with things you can’t control.
A similar risk is this total immersion in a specialized pursuit. You ignore the odds, because you have to. We're taught to never give up on our dreams. To have tenacity, resilience, and trust that reaching what you are striving for will make it all worth it. But we don't recognize the danger. If you spend your life chasing a dream, living in a state where your happiness and fulfillment depends on some future accomplishment, even the end result will disappoint. Maybe I'm just doing mental gymnastics, trying to deal with the pain of failure. But what if I achieved everything I hoped for. What if I found myself skating around with the cup overhead, on top of the world in that moment. Would that be enough? Would I be satisfied? The error is thinking that we will reach some state and be finished. We place all the emphasis on this one ideal, and fail to see that it's really the work and journey itself that has to be the reward. There's a reason it's a cliché. Life is in a state of constant flux, achievements soon become memories. It might take a while and a few hard lessons to realize, but the sooner you learn to place peace of mind on internal rather than external, the better.
At a certain point, I used hockey as a way to defer the difficulty of self-assessment. I could delay acknowledging the growing vulnerability if I just kept forward motion. Project everything on to the game, focus on wins and losses, the ups and downs of a season. By losing myself on the ice, the meditative quality of the play allowed me to ignore existential questions. It was a testing ground for mental habits, and my mind was clear, focused. As long as I had that, I didn’t have to think about anything else. But as much as I turned a blind eye, hockey careers have an end. Sometimes that end is definite, in the form of an injury. And sometimes it's undefined. You don't get a contract. Doors shut. You feel left with a lifetime of skill and investment and no outlet. The uncertainty is debilitating.
When people ask if I quit, I don't know how to answer. Conversations all seem to progress in the same way, the "what do you do?" question constantly opens up everything I thought I'd let go of. I always had an easy answer. I'm a hockey player. I want to hold onto that, everything I've worked to achieve. But that chapter of life has ended. It's taken me a couple years to accept. I'm scared of the person I'll be without it. It took decades to become an expert, and I know the work involved to begin again. Of course it's scary. Of course you feel alone, like you're the only person to ever go through this. They're growing pains. Unless you face it head on, call it what it is and recognize your struggle, you're bound to repeat the same mistakes. You'll be searching for something that you will never find, seeking to replace what can't be replaced.
You're nobody again. Any past accomplishments have expired, and there are new mountains to climb. We're never permanently successful or defeated, and the right to identify with something must be continuously earned. Admitting struggle isn't an easy process, and we like to pretend as if we always have it figured out. But the way through is humility. Submitting to a beginners mind, recognizing how you can draw on this experience to transition into the next adventure life has in store. The mask I wore so often sits on the shelf, a reminder of the things I've experienced through it. The thoughts it's seen, the absolute joy it once contained. It protected me for years. But now it's time to view life without it.