3. Be strongly rooted yet flexible
Football is a game of movement, pass and move, pass and move, but movement and flexibility depends on stability, its a bit of a cliche to say that football is a metaphor for life but it is in many ways - well for me anyway. Teamwork and combined effort are embedded in the ethos but the need to be flexible, to be able to act and react to change is uppermost. We live in a mobile world where stability is hard to maintain. I live hundreds of miles from where I grew up, others I know its thousands of miles, my own daughter Abbi, and keeping a rootedness is geographically difficult. Indeed, if the Scottish vote goes the yay way I might even cease to be Scottish - which would be odd. And then again, not so odd. I live in Brighton, I work in Winchester, we root ourselves into our new communities, cast our nets to become part of that community, to contribute to that community - with a huge degree of flexibility - otherwise we just become shadows on the cobblestones, like this picture of Dan and I leaving our trace in Barcelona, taking from the community, without actually giving back except as tourists - so the thought for today is be strongly rooted yet flexible:
