Change is hard.

We’re in a time and a place where just about everyone would give their right arm if we could just “get back to normal.” If we could reset to before the unrest, before the virus, before the last election.

But that’s not what we need. We don’t need to go back. We need to go forward.

You can’t prepare for the future by trying to recreate the past

You can see that in the one club that’s still active: Rosenborg Ballklub. No team has won more titles in the men’s or women’s game in Norway. No team has a higher profile, garners more attention, or attracts more talent.

Neither team has been in great form lately. The men scuffled last year and have begun this season decidedly off color. Their last title came just two years ago, but they feel far from championship caliber.

The women, who began play as Trondheim-Orn in 1972, may have dominated the Norwegian soccer scene in the 90’s but it has been a decade since they cracked the top 5. While Lillestrom has grabbed the league by the scruff of the neck, Rosenborg nee Trondheim, might well wish for a chance to go back to their glory days.

But what’s so gratifying is to see the teams push ahead rather than search around behind themselves.

The two players who did the most to shine last week were Emil Konradsen Ceide and Julie Blakstad. Each is only 18 years old. To put that in perspective, if they’d been foreign exchange students: I’d have taught them. Even more in perspective: both they are closer to your age than they are to mine.

That’s as it should be. The focus shouldn’t be on what has been, but on what could be. Ceide and Blakstad are the future of Rosenborg, just as you boys are the future of our family.

It can be hard to let go of your own importance, and for every Ceide and Blakstad that rises to the fore, it seems like a veteran player is fading away. To be sure, you can certainly learn a lot from studying the past and respecting those who have gone before you. But that’s not what this is about.

Focusing on the future doesn’t diminish the past. Returning to “normalcy” is only positive if what was “normal” was good for you. Hard as it is to know that my time is passing with every stroke of the keys and tick of the clock, I take comfort in knowing that what comes next will boost you boys into the future.