Controversy and integrity

My husband said the other day that my blog was a bit dull lately. I said I know but I don’t have the most exciting life at the moment. Not that I am complaining because I have come to terms with my not hugely exciting life. I am happy and content with just a little impatience for the future.

He said you need to write about something controversial.

The problem is, I have a problem being controversial. I would love to be controversial but I seem to care too much about hurting other people’s feelings. I worry about who might read my blog and be offended, especially people I know and like but do annoying things every so often, you know, things that could be interesting to write about. The problem with this is the guilt that I carry when I do something that I think might have upset someone, or the stress that builds with the fear I might do something to offend someone.

I am even teaching my children to be nice to other people, to be considerate of their feelings, to try and make sure that everyone is happy. What a huge burden that is (for me, never mind for a child). I am not saying that it is OK to be rude to people or to be totally selfish and inconsiderate but is it really my job/my kids job to make sure everyone else is happy? What is wrong with doing something that might slightly offend or upset someone else if it means that my/my kids’ life is so much better or happier?

And to take this a stage further, there don’t appear to be too many people around that go out of their way to avoid upsetting people all of the time. Again I am not saying that everyone is rude and selfish and that my family is the only virtuous family around but that pleasing others is not their main goal in life.

So, where has this come from today, what has happened to make me write about this today, and will I regret it tomorrow? Probably, but right now I don’t care. Is this progress? I don’t know.

Someone who I like, but due to their actions has made me not like them so much now, didn’t have a problem with saying and doing something that upsets another person. (See I am still very cryptic and vague – I will work on that for the future).

Even now, I am feeling bad for disliking someone even though their actions totally warrant it and more or maybe what I am angry about is that I am wasting time dealing with it. (I knew when I starting writing that this wouldn’t make much sense.)

My husband coaches a local soccer team, and he does it really well. However one of the parents decided yesterday, during the game, I might add, to question his integrity, coaching and managing skills by saying that he is not being fair with the amount of time the players are being substituted.

Now maybe these parents don’t know, but the amount of time and effort that my husband puts into coaching this team way exceeds the 1 hour of training and the 40 minutes of the game each week.

He has, in his own time, taken coaching courses, so that he could teach these kids to the best of his ability.

He spends time each week planning the training sessions so that the kids can learn the skills they need in a fun way.

He spends hours updating the website with photos and match reports so that the other parents can have a record of their child’s achievements.

He records exactly how much time each player has on the field, who scored, who assists (cos it’s not all about who scores), who saves, and much more (OK, sounds a bit overboard to me but he is very passionate about it).

He takes the kids to gala days.

He rings around other teams to arrange friendly matches and I am sure he does so much more.

In addition to this, he is a total stress ball before the matches and I am pretty certain that this is the cause of the grey hair and not me or our own kids.

To summarize, he is a great coach, I don’t think the team could ask for better and to question his integrity is just plain rude.

………………………

Just to clarify, as if I need to!!! Once analysed, all the stats show, that the disadvantaged??? player actually has had more playing time than any other player in the team.