Yesterday I stopped by my old high school hockey practice.
For those that don't know, I grew up playing ice hockey from the age of five all the way through college.
Nothing beats the rush of playing ice hockey, of the roar of your local town cheering and chanting for you, and of the feeling of importance you get from playing high school hockey—especially public high school hockey in a town like Falmouth, MA on the East Coast of the US, in Massachusetts.
It's one of those experiences from your youth that growing up, you don't know the value of what you have. You can't really recognize how special and unique the experience is.
But then, of course, a decade goes by.
It's been 10 years since I've been in that ice rink, in that locker room worried about a history paper or math test the next day while simultaneously gearing up—strapping on my shin pads, skates, elbows, shoulder pads, helmet—taping up my stick.
Sitting alongside friends that I’d had since I was a little kid.
And going out to practice to refine my skills and sweat every ounce of water available out onto the ice.
And get yelled at a lot by the team of coaches.
I want to emphasize first that it’s a very special experience, sweating your guts out in extreme exhileration while simultaneously being on a frozen sheet of ice during a hockey game on ice.
Especially as I've gotten older, I look at playing hockey as borderline spiritual.
The rush and the feeling you get, especially afterwards, and later that night. It’s hard to describe the energy you feel. It’s like a crazy amount of Chi you generate.
I remember growing up, my mom would always say the same thing when I'd come home from school tired: "You'll feel better after hockey practice."
And she was always right.
Even if I felt sick or exhausted, I'd come back from practice with more energy than when I left.
But what I'd really like to reflect on is this:
Last night, when I went back to the rink and caught up with my old coaches—who are still the same guys from 10 years ago—one thing really struck me.
This very odd sense of déjà vu.
I was standing there, looking at these 15 to 18-year-old guys, remembering what it was like when I was in their shoes.
All the same drills.
It's almost like time had been frozen in this capsule.
And the only thing that had changed in the last decade were the guys in the uniforms.
It was like looking into a time machine.
Looking back 10 years.
And I could see myself.
I could see all the things going on in my brain and all the things probably going on in these kids' brains.
And how limited the scope of consciousness really is and was. Not in a bad way at all, but it's just true.
When you're in high school, you don't know anything more important than the game tomorrow. You're stressed about what you're going to do on the bus ride to Franklin, Massachusetts. And if the other team is going to have a guy who's a lot bigger than you, who's going to flatten you on the ice. Or whether your team is going to win or not. Or whether—if you do win—the girl that you like at school is going to find out that you played good or bad or scored or didn't score.
And that's all that really matters to you.
I was explaining this to Chloe last night at dinner as well—that growing up in a small town, particularly, the scope of your awareness of the world is even more limited.
You don't know about what it's like driving around big cities or traveling to all the countries that I've been to. Or what it's like to make thousands of dollars in a day. Or in many cases, what it's like to truly be in love aside from the high school puppy love that we experience in high school.
You don't know what it's like to feel the sense of the fragility of life.
Now, in some cases—in some tragic cases—some high school hockey players do. And sadly, some of my friends I grew up playing with did pass in a car accident two years after I graduated. And so the guys there had to suffer and face that very stone-cold reality that life does end.
But for most kids in high school, and what I remember, the consciousness that I found myself in just felt, in comparison, so small to what it has become over the years.
After graduating high school, this bubble pops.
I remember driving out of my school after I graduated and just bawling my eyes out at the weight of 18 years of my life.
A chapter that I just knew was coming to an end and had ended and was final.
From there, I went on to Boston University.
Which really, in retrospect, I didn't realize how blessed I was to have that opportunity.
Obviously, I worked hard to get into the school.
But just how multicultural it was, how many various people from around the world and different cultures I got to interact with.
And yet, even still, it was a bubble.
Students rarely left the Boston University campus.
Yet, being there allowed me to think differently, especially when I took classes in philosophy and religion and learned about cultures all around the world and started reading books.
I think the biggest leap in the spaciousness of my consciousness was in the time I got obsessed with reading around my freshman year of college. Just devouring books on Audible every single day.
Learning as much as I could about philosophy, spirituality, making money, and the world.
And then, of course, as soon as college comes to an end, you enter the dreaded- or what you think to be dreaded - real world. That's really when, at least for me, the Overton window got pushed even further.
And you realize that you're just like a cowboy in the Wild West of this world.
Reality.
Nobody really knows what they're doing.
We're on a floating rock in the sky.
People pretend to think they know what's going on.
Nobody really at the core actually does.
People pretend that they know what’s happening here, but they don't.
And when you kind of reach that road and realize that the only way to make total absolute truth claims is to lie through your teeth at least a little bit about the nature of reality and existence itself—
And the best you can do is make educated guesses and have a bit of faith in what your model of reality leans on–
Once you get to that point, which is where I'm at right about now…
And you've studied every major religious tradition, and you've experimented, and you've traveled around the world, and you felt love and you felt lost, and you've experienced even the peace and depth of meditation…
And you experience that life is truly about this surrender…
As Socrates said (or at least we think he said), “If there is one thing I know, it’s that I know nothing.”
And then you come back to Falmouth High School, a small town of 35,000 people in Massachusetts on a Friday in December…
And you get on the ice and you just look at that journey…
You see how little you knew, how much you learned, and ultimately, that no one know anything.
It is somehow just beautiful.
At the end of the practice, I went to give a speech to the team.
I walked into the locker room.
The coach asked me to talk about something for a couple minutes, and I didn't really know what to say.
I led off by saying that I remembered being in their seats and having guys come in who'd graduated at FHS.
And I remembered that they would basically give me the same message every single time—that we didn't know how good we had it, and we didn't know that the lessons that we learn in hockey would apply in the real world.
I told them all that's true.
I gave them a little bit of background on who I am and what I've done.
I don't think they even really knew who I was.
Maybe a couple guys heard about me.
I even name-dropped Iman Gadzhi and only a few guys raised their hands saying they knew who he was.
At that moment, only 3 guys in the room saying they knew Iman Gadzhi, I realized I actually really had no idea what 15 to 18-year-olds are doing these days.
But I did offer my contact information and said they were more than welcome to reach out if they wanted to ask any questions or wanted any help with anything.
So that was a really interesting experience.
My suggestion would be to go back to your high school at some point.
Chat with your teachers, chat with your old sports coaches.
The perspective is profound.
Have a great weekend!
-Arlin
PS - again if ur reading these, shoot me a DM or respond to this email. My open rates are very high on these emails, but i like the back and forth too.
