Do something...

My father would enjoy this one...

As the great John Kennedy (legendary Hawthorn Football Club coach) once directed to his players at half-time of the 1975 grand final

"Just do something! Do! Don't think, don't hope... Do!"

On researching this piece of Australian football lore, Kennedy apparently had an ire for those that he deemed as having a "softness" about them, the school-teacher, academics and professional types, the thinkers. Whereas he had more a stronger affinity for the blue-collar man, the worker, the smith, the doer...

It can be a tough generalization, and also somewhat ironic considering he himself was a teacher and school principal by trade. But I suppose he found that it were the doers that had greatest utility in winning footy games. At a time when the game was probably as combative and instinctual as it ever was, and the stakes never higher, pontification had no place in the foxholes.

But as simple as it is, the sound of Kennedy reliably echoes in my thoughts when conjuring up the essence of dreams, ambitions and desires - action. Whatever it is you're trying to do, wherever you're trying to go, all that really matters is what you actually do. When I think of it, there's a million different incarnations of this exact message within literature, film, internet or wherever as the principle is so prevalent and undeniable, yet it can be so so easy to still be stuck for whatever reason...

Some of us just aren't born smiths, but still can be taught.

I'm sure that John Kennedy wasn't setting out to create any emphatic historical directives around how people ought to live lives on that day in 1975, I'm pretty sure he was simply imploring something from his men in a losing effort. But that doesn't make him incorrect, as something will always trump nothing, no matter how it works out. You either win and taste glory, or lose and learn but either will be better than neither every time.

It's a remarkably strong message to adhere to, not just for trying to win footy games, but probably the strongest of principles by way of living a life, however that looks. We all can think the vastest, the most fantastical, the most terrible and most infinite and amazing lives for ourselves, but actualization is in our actions.

Do something