Tom Brady has quarterbacked his teams to seven Super Bowl victories, six with the New England Patriots and one with the Tampa bay Buccaneers.

Here is what Brady said after winning his first three:

“…Me, I think, God, there’s gotta be more than this…What else is there for me?”

Interviewer: “What’s the answer?”

Brady: “I wish I knew. I wish I knew…”

Well, he has four more Super Bowl victories since that interview.

Is that the answer?

Evidently not, for he is returning for at least one more season with Tampa Bay in hopes of winning number eight.

Maybe that will do it for him.

Clearly he does not need the money, he and his super model wife with enough to last quite a few lifetimes. (Perhaps they can even feed a third world country?) And surely he does not need more accolades or fans or awards.

I am reminded of a John Rockefeller quote back in the day, at a time when he was considered to be the ‘wealthiest man alive’. When asked, “How much is enough?”, he responded, “Just a little bit more.”

The wealthiest man alive and the winningest NFL quarterback in history (by a long shot) are basically drinking from the same fountain, both hoping to find the magic elixir that vows to provide that which every man and woman longs for - Peace.

We the fans do our best to shoulder in and fight for space to drink from that same fountain, only to discover - if we are lucky - that it is nothing more than a trough filled with slop. We have latched on to the dream, complete with distraction after distraction, vicariously living through our favorite teams and players in the vain hope that they might somehow rescue us from the doldrums. If only for a moment.

They cannot. They themselves, as evidenced by Brady’s candid admission after he had only won a measly three Super Bowls, are fighting for their space at the slop dispenser with the rest of us while hoping against hope that the fame and fortune it promises will fill their lives with meaning.

This is ALWAYS an illusion.

I’m guessing that when Tom Brady finds himself alone in the dark, ‘relaxing’ in his easy chair within the bowels of one of his mansions, the adoration of the fans does not assuage his fears. Nor do the monstrous digits in his bank accounts or the Super Bowl rings on display in his trophy case. For just like you and me, the things this world seductively offers are nothing more than glittery trinkets that can never fulfill.

Let me be clear, I Love Tom Brady! I have nothing against him at all. In fact, his honesty after the third Super Bowl victory was refreshing and eye-opening. And poignant.

Until we, including Brady and all of the other would-be Brady’s in the NFL, ‘wake up’ to the fact that this world can only offer illusions, we will keep chasing the distractions instead of looking in the only place where our true longings can be met.

Brady appears to be looking outside of himself for his ‘salvation’. It will never come, even if he defies Father Time and wins TEN Super Bowls.

Brady must look elsewhere.

And so must we.

Photo attribution: Keith Allison from Baltimore, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons