Seeing what matters beyond what seems to matter There are occasional, sublime moments in sport that elevate the event to something beyond competition, beyond theatre. I witnessed one such moment many years ago watching a kids indoor soccer match. The kids were at that bittersweet age between playing from joy and playing to win. The parents were well on the wrong side of that divide. It was an important game, the teams evenly matched. The kids ran and jumped, their nascent skill turning the contest one way and then the other. But, like stringless puppeteers, the soccer mums and dads writhed in the gap between what happened on the court and what they longed to happen. They screamed convoluted instruction and, sadly, abuse, at the youngsters. The kids responded with a more frantic but less effective energy. The game descended into a muddled frenzy. So much energy. So much activity. So much uncertainty. As the chaos climaxed, one of the kids realised his shoelace was undone. His dilemma: stop and tie the lace – leaving his side a player down - or muddle on un-laced? To the disbelief of all, he knelt and began tying his laces. The maelstrom swarmed around him, lurching in favour of his opponents. The soccer parents were apoplectic - steam from their ears and froth from their mouths, reaching for an hysteria worthy of the madness of this child. Never had they witnessed such idiocy, such irresponsibility. And the maelstrom intensified. But the lace-tying child just knelt and tied. As froth, steam and storm raged around him, he only became more still. This was when the magic started to happen. Amid the panic, as if to the beat of his drum, time slowed down. He became the eye of the storm. Then, lace tied, he stood. Surveyed the field. Saw clearly. And decided. The power of presence Suddenly, he was at the other end of the court, exploding back into our timeline with a perfect, powerful, game-saving tackle that left opponents spreadeagled, and the whole room stunned. Silence, but for a collective gasp, flooded the arena - the unspoken question hanging in the air: “What the…just happened?” Humility spread through the soccer parents like an aspirin kicking in. I don’t recall who won or lost. All I remember – vividly - is that for an unmeasurable moment, someone liberated themselves from the tide of opinion, engaged fully in what they were doing, saw clearly what mattered, and acted on it.