Benched for Life

I was listening to a conversation recently and I could relate to what was being discussed. So I thought maybe many someones out there have felt this way too. Have you every felt benched in life? Yes you are working, socializing, seemingly living your life, but you are not in the game. You are not a player, but you have been played – at least once. You see others seeming to live their lives the way they want to, achieve certain things and you wonder if you have been crazy glued to that bench in the corner – out of sight out of mind.

There, everything happens in slow motion and you just cannot get things fully off the ground. When you see others hurriedly going about their business, there you are waiting. The waiting is the hardest when you sit without a plan and hope for the best. You wonder if you should protest or keep quiet, because making a sound may draw too much attention to the cracks you made on that bench.

Also, on that bench you feel trapped and you may find it hard to be happy, at one time or another, for those who are playing and winning – even if they are on your team. It’s not easy to be happy for everyone when you have come to see yourself as the dark horse without the success. Hard to feel compelled to even think of yourself as being in the game and so you try to divorce yourself from the whole situation, unsuccessfully too.

However, I think to be on the bench is to have placed yourself there. No one is keeping me or you or anyone on that bench. Sometimes we may walk off the pitch before the game is over, because we are so blinded by our as-not-yet experienced defeat. Or maybe we need to think of a game that fits who we are and where we are and not trying to live by a set of rules never intended for us – rules that guarantee our defeat. Maybe it’s not that we have been placed on the bench but that out of fear we choose to remain on it.