The oversized digital display reads “Home: 46 / Visitors: 44 – 4.30 seconds”. Your sudden tunnel vision prevents you from distinguishing the numbers. There’s no escaping the running countdown to reality.

All that is within your eyesight are two little red flags, waving freely on top the goal post. Below the 35-foot structure is a big blur stained by two sets of colours: black and yellow worn by the rival team, red and blue by your brothers in arm. In the midst of the chaos there is one little red dot on which all your focus is drawn upon.

Your body stays as still as a picture frame, but your mind is racing with too many thoughts and none of them can remain. You focus all your concentration on how you should kick the ball with the perfect angle, but at the same time you’re trying to remember the right formulas for tomorrow’s Economics exam.

As you attempt to refocus on the football, last nights heated argument with your girlfriend vividly interrupts your thought process and disrupts your focus once again. To kick those memories away, you begin to recall your moms’ words from this morning on how much she said she loves you. This helps calm your spirit and regain your concentration to stare back at the football.

Behind you are 70 yards of an empty field. All that prevails are scars of a viciously fought battle. On one side is a bloodstain from an earlier hit made by one of your teammates. Directly at the 20-yard mark is Eric’s mouth guard that he lost after getting violently blindsided.

Lying on the heart of the field is a piece of a red fabric, which came off your quarterback’s jersey from when he got taken down after earning a glorious 15-yard advance. Finally, at the other 30-yard mark is where you stand, stressed out of your mind with the game dangling in your hands. 

With the entire game holding by a thread, you close your eyes and take a deep breath. In that moment in time you begin to think of every outcome possible, just as Doctor Strange did in Endgame. Once you run through all the scenarios and complete your breath, everything goes silent. Until you hear the whistle blow.

Trust me life is great, we all get those moments where we stare into a challenge and think of a million different things in our cluttered mind. We sometimes even try to look back to see how we got there, but we don’t always get an easy answer. We then freeze for a moment. Our best tool in this case is our mind. Having a clear head will allow us to make the right decision and realize that the road up ahead is not as bad as it seems. Just look ahead past your fears and doubts and you’ll see that you will eventually make it.