Blog #181: What Super Bowl 56 Taught Us is That It’s Not About the Ending, It’s About th
- Jeffrey Snyder
- Feb 14, 2022
- 3 min read
Los Angeles Rams Quarterback Matthew Stafford following the Rams’ win in Super Bowl 56
So, another NFL season has come to a close where one team has been crowned as Super Bowl Champions and the other team took a major step forward, even though they didn’t get the big prize.
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Los Angeles Rams Quarterback Matthew Stafford and his wife, Kelly, after the Rams won Super Bowl 56
What I see a lot of with these types of events is that people seem to judge the ending more than the journey itself. As an autism/neurodiversity self-advocate and public speaker, I feel as if we need to consider the journey more than the goal itself. Not just in sports, but in life in general.
I mean, look at the journey Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford had to go through to get to where he is right now. The journey began when he was drafted by the Detroit Lions and it wasn’t an easy journey to begin with. Matthew suffered a lot of losing seasons in Detroit and it had to take that one chance of him being traded to Los Angeles to get a chance at being a contender again.
Furthermore, that journey wasn’t easy further when his wife, Kelly, was diagnosed with a brain tumor to which she thankfully recovered from.
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In a way, a lot of us in the autism/neurodiversity and disability communities have had to overcome obstacles similar to Matthew Stafford’s. But, I think, a lot of people want to view the ending more than the journey itself which is a dirty shame.
The problem is that we are too impatient to get to that respective goal and forget why we are even achieving that goal in the first place. Sometimes, we take these things for granted and that is another dirty shame. I mean, look at society today. We take a lot of things for granted and never get to fully appreciate what we learn on that journey.
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Cincinnati Bengal Quarterback Joe Burrow
This, of course, brings me to the Super Bowl Runner up Cincinnati Bengals. Now their journey was much longer than Stafford’s to take that next level in the sense that they had not been to the Super Bowl since 1989 and that they had not won a playoff game since 1990, 31 years to be precise.
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It’s important to remember that the journey Cincinnati took to get to where they are is similar to our own journeys as neurodiverse/disabled individuals.
Sometimes we take journeys that can last for many years or even our entire lifetime. Hell, my journey to becoming Seekonk Public Schools’ first Autistic graduate without coming from other school districts and getting my own apartment took 20 years of my life to accomplish and that was less than what Cincinnati took to win a playoff game. If someone was in my shoes, they would have one of two scenarios:
Focus on the ending goal and completely ignore the lessons we learn on the journey.
Take the opportunity to appreciate what you learn from the lessons on that journey
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The truth of the matter is that while we live in a viral society in terms of everything becoming public for all to see, the only viral I would like to see is people embracing what they learn on their journeys to get to where they are.
If neurodiverse/disabled individuals and families can take that lesson from Super Bowl 56, then they can learn more about themselves and the world around them.
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Catch you all later!!
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