Seeing It Twice: A Seahawks–49ers Night, Revisited

Some experiences change once you become a parent, not because the moment itself is different, but because you are.

That realization hit me on a cold winter night at Lumen Field during a Seahawks–49ers playoff game. It was the same rivalry, the same stadium, and the same noise, yet my perspective was completely different.

I waited most of my life to see the Mariners reach the ALCS in person. I was in my mid-twenties before I ever saw the Seattle Seahawks play a playoff game live—years of watching from couches, bars, and crowded living rooms before I finally stood in the building for one that truly mattered.

So I’ll admit it: there was a small, irrational moment of jealousy realizing my ten-year-old got to see both in the same year.

That feeling passed almost immediately.

The second we walked into the stadium together, it stopped being about what he was getting early and started being about what I was getting again.

This was his first real playoff experience. Not highlights. Not stories. Not something half-remembered from a screen. He felt the noise, the cold air, and the tension in every snap. He experienced it cleanly, without history weighing it down.

Where we were standing mattered to me more than I expected. We were near the same end zone where I stood years earlier for the tipped ball that sent Seattle to its only Super Bowl victory—one of those moments permanently etched into your nervous system. I can still feel the chaos of it if I think about it long enough.

He wasn’t alive for that. He doesn’t carry that memory or the decades of context that came before it. He doesn’t know what it feels like to lose for a long time before winning means something different.

At first, that gap felt strange. Then it felt like the point.

Watching the game through his eyes reminded me that timing shapes how we experience success more than we like to admit. The same achievement can feel wildly different depending on when it shows up in your life.

That’s true in sports. It’s even more true in careers.

Some people taste success early. Things click fast. Doors open sooner than expected, and momentum builds before perspective has time to catch up. Others wait. They grind. They take hits. They learn lessons the slow way. By the time success shows up, it’s layered with relief, gratitude, and sometimes exhaustion.

We talk about these paths as if one is better. They’re not.

Early success doesn’t mean someone skipped the work. Late success doesn’t mean someone was behind. They simply create different relationships with winning.

Standing there that night, I realized something I hadn’t fully articulated before. I can’t give my son the appreciation that comes from decades of losing seasons, and I can’t compress all of that context into a single conversation or shared moment.

And that’s okay.

What I can give him is presence. I can slow down enough to actually feel the moment instead of comparing it to everything that came before or worrying about what comes next.

This is where the experience connects directly to work and leadership.

So many careers don’t stall because people fail; they stall because people never stop moving long enough to recognize when they’ve succeeded. We jump from milestone to milestone, from role to role, from win to win—always chasing the next thing and rarely acknowledging the one we’re standing in.

Gratitude doesn’t show up automatically when success arrives. It’s a discipline. You either practice it, or you miss the moment entirely. You don’t need to struggle for decades to appreciate a win, but you do need to notice it when it happens.

That night wasn’t about the final score, rivalry history, or playoff math. It was about sharing the same place, the same energy, and the same stakes at two very different points in life—once as someone chasing moments, and once as someone learning to sit inside them.

When the game ended and we walked back out into the cold, my voice was gone and his energy was somehow still intact. We talked about the noise, the plays, and the crowd—simple things.

And that’s when it hit me: this was the real gift.

Not just seeing the Seahawks in the playoffs, but seeing the same experience twice—once through the eyes of who I used to be, and once through the eyes of someone just beginning.

In football, in careers, and in life, timing changes everything. But gratitude is available in every version of the story if you’re willing to pause long enough to feel it.

Sometimes stopping to smell the roses isn’t nostalgia.

It’s wisdom finally arriving on time.