After the last three months, I know you can see the ways that life will be hard for you. Rarely have we had as long or as unsettling a series of experiences as we have had in 2020. While you are insulated from most of it now by your age, your sex, your family’s financial status, and your innocent age, I know that you’ve gathered some of the pressure that’s on your parents, grandparents, and neighbors every day.

At times like these the pressure often pushes us to do one of a few things: look outward to find someone to blame, or look inward for support. Please, please, please boys look inside yourselves and ask “how can I help?” as often as possible.

In the last week, our neighborhood has been on fire, our block has teemed with men and women carrying guns, our streets have been covered with heavy duty army grade equipment. I know you loved the sight of so many different trucks, Alex, but I also know that you saw your mama and I looking stricken, confused, and worried. Owen, I’m sure you could feel the anxiety in our arms and urgency in our whispers.

But more than think about what has happened or assigning blame for why, what matters now is helping with doing something next. This is where sports provide us with a reflection on life.

When things go wrong, some players ask who’s to blame. They turn around and point fingers and demand that others change to serve them. Think about the best goalie in American soccer history: Hope Solo.

Solo was excellent for the Women’s National Team, and she knew it. If the team won, it was because she was great. If the team lost, she often put the onus on dirty playing opponents or incompetent teammates and coaches. In particular, she lambasted her predecessor (and Minnesotan Soccer saint) Briana Scurry after a 4-0 loss.

Some people will tell you that such focus and ego is essential to being an all-time great. That may be true. Certainly Solo is an all-time legend. But sports, especially soccer, like life, isn’t about your own individual greatness, it’s about the community around you.

Consider the two players named the best in the world last fall: Lionel Messi and Megan Rapinoe. Each is excellent sure, and certainly, each has an ego. Messi’s competitiveness is legendary, but his memory for failure is short. He has the most goals in the history of Spanish football, he also has the most assists, providing opportunities for others and making his team (like himself) successful.

Likewise, Rapinoe is a dominant, tenacious competitor. Likewise she can be an imperious goal scorer and a tremendous distributor. But unlike the antagonistic Solo, or the quiet Messi, Rapinoe still speaks up, but does so to promote and support, rather than to diminish or blame.

She knelt to oppose police violence when no other women or white athletes were taking such a position. She questioned the expectation that her team celebrate with a divisive and crude leader. She repeatedly risks her own income to emphasize equal pay for all the women on the team. Rapinoe doesn’t just focus on her own greatness, she works for a greater society for all.

We could take this time to think about ourselves. But our discomfort doesn’t come from the peaceful protesters who camped out on our yards on Monday, or the frustrated few who broke things across the river last week.

It’s not something that the mayor, the police chief, the governor or even the president could control, and we shouldn’t waste time parceling out responsibility to them.

Even the officer, whose callous indifference to cries for help cost George Floyd his life, doesn’t shoulder the blame for our unease. We weren’t physically harmed by him and our unease is nothing compared to the Floyd family’s loss. He is simply the embodiment of a larger, heavier, inescapable system that fostered a belief that what he chose to do was right. It’s the system that makes us uneasy, and all the people, organizations, and inner voices we want to fight against that cause us this conflict.

Rather than assigning blame and absolving ourselves, like Hope Solo or our All-of-the-Credit-None-of-the-responsibility president, we can take this moment to ask how can we help. We can give, we can volunteer, we can agitate and advocate. We can assist others like Messi, we can fight for change like Rapinoe. And if you’re not sure what to do, start by asking “how can I help”, then do the needful.