Wishing Them Well

They’re somewhere else now.

A different program. A different team. A different chapter. And the question I want to put in front of you is: do you genuinely want good things for them?

Not as a performance. Not because you’re supposed to. Actually: do you want them to do well?

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

As far as it depends on you. You can’t control how the departure happened, how the person feels about this program, what they say about it elsewhere, or what their experience at the next place is like. What depends on you is what you carry toward them. Whether the space where their name comes up produces resentment or genuine goodwill.

Wishing someone well who left your team under complicated circumstances is genuinely hard. Especially if the departure hurt the team, or left things unresolved, or involved something you were angry about. Genuine goodwill in those circumstances is not the absence of those feelings. It’s the choice, made after feeling them, to want the best for the person anyway.

The athlete who can genuinely wish well for a former teammate who left on difficult terms has found a freedom that resentment can’t offer. Resentment keeps you connected to the situation. Genuine goodwill releases it.

As far as it depends on you: want good things for them. Not because they earned it or because the departure was clean. Because the person you are doesn’t require their situation to go badly in order for yours to go well. You have enough. Wish them well from that place.

Honest interior assessment. The question acknowledges that genuine goodwill may not be fully present yet and creates space for the honest answer.