Battles on the Hardwood....

I hate (add in a few expletives) losing. I know everyone says that, as if anyone would ever say they enjoy the experience of losing. Not a memory most people look back fondly upon. I don’t even like writing about losing, I’ve been known to avoid phone calls after losses, I refuse to learn how to say the word in Greek.

When I was younger I was consumed by losses. I would feel overwhelmed by the pain, practically hyperventilating from disappointment in the locker room or crying myself to sleep. I wish I were exaggerating. I’d sit staring at the court after everyone had left, when all the lights were out, wondering what went wrong, how I could have allowed my team to throw away success. Sometimes I’d do wind sprints or shooting drills in the dark, my own version of self-flagellation for the basketball Gods. Sometimes I’d look out among the corn fields of Iowa as my dad drove in silence, lost in a whirlwind of rage and sadness; stunned by my own inability to swim out of the blackness of despair.

I do realize that none of this really sounds healthy.

I think the thing that has always bothered me about losing is that I’ve always known winning was about strength of will. And I knew that while God didn’t make me tall or make me jump, I’d been blessed with will in spades. I’d always felt that was my job on every team and if it came down to that being the reason for a loss then it was put squarely on my shoulders. Some player’s role is to rebound, some to play defense, some to score; mine is to pump the fire of victory through a team made up of some people that care as much as me, and many that don’t. That’s the responsibility that I signed up for and if I could feel proud of my contributions when we won, I’d better be ready to bear it when we lost.

I understand now that sports are nothing if not an exercise in warfare. We literally have to convince ourselves that games are life and death; that the court is in fact a battlefield where we hope to claim victory over the corpses of our opponent. We get to feign conflict, without the real physical ramifications of war. On the one hand we have to treat games with the seriousness of battle, on the other we have to realize that they are only important because we make them that way.

When I really think about it, I’ve often marveled at my ability to make sports important. Because intellectually I know that in the grand scheme of things, they are not. At least my parents seem to think I have talents outside the basketball arena, yet it’s been my choice to commit myself to improvement within it. I’ve had to trick myself in some ways, find challenges beyond the physical, and it’s only in the last few years that I have been able to understand why I’ve chosen to pursue the path of self-improvement through a game.

But sometimes I wonder what the hell I am doing with my life. Take last week for example. We lost at home by three then by fifteen on the road. One starter went down with an ankle sprain in the first game; a second one was quarantined because of a fever and swine flu scare. One evening practice consisted of me, sick with a cold virus, and my coach locked in the video room watching game film for two hours. The next day a two-hour bus ride was spent watching the same game film with my team, reigniting the disgust I felt at myself. I was hating life.

I was completely wrapped up in the disappointment of failure; while one side of my brain worked on ‘perspective’, the other was grieving as if the battle had really consumed lives.

I mean really?

But ultimately, this trickery of the mind, the importance places on a game that could just as easily mean nothing is essential. Why else would we sweat and toil and lose sleep if the whole point of playing was just to show up?

So when losses hurt and I hate my life, my profession, the manufactured importance of a single game, I remind myself of the alternative: living a passionless life, a safe existence, where one never feels the sting of losses or the thrill of victory. So my consolation lies not only in time and perspective but also in the understanding that I made a decision to care, to give myself to something. And it’s a decision I would never second guess, on the court or off; a decision to play so hard to win that it hurts so bad to lose.

Lost in the Moment

I love getting lost in a game. In fact, one of my favorite aspects of playing basketball is losing myself. I would imagine most people if they were conscious of it, would count the freedom of not thinking as one of the most pleasurable experiences in life. In fact, its most likely why people exercise, or drink, or take drugs, why people make art or music or have sex; this search for a quieter mind when everything around us disappears. The transcendent experiences are the ones we seek out, the ones we remember, and the ones we find it difficult to describe when they fade into the past. The ineffable moments that put us squarely in the present.

Disappearing into the moment doesn’t have to be so rare; it can be listening to a symphony or a taking a long hike in the woods, or cooking a lovely meal. In fact, it can be found everywhere if you train yourself to find it. Mostly though, we find it by accident like walking through the middle of a noisy, chaotic city and seeing a full moon. It might be fleeting but your mind stands still and for a second, it’s just you and the moon.

Some people think sports are about adrenaline and competition but I’m beginning to realize that it’s only part of it. For me, it’s that the adrenaline brings a focus that allows me to just ‘be’, a phenomenon we don’t allow much in daily life. We have so many things to think about, the mind can perseverate on one topic or skitter along with compulsive and random thoughts. Our attention is broad and indiscriminate and seemingly unstoppable. We don’t really accomplish anything at all with these thoughts so we are left at the end of the day with not much to show for the psychic energy expended. But with sports its different. We have something to zero in on, an activity where we get to quiet the mind and be fully present in who we are and what we are doing.

But even in sports, the mind can erupt in thought. The ego can take over, convinced it knows better and it can dominate the situation quite easily if you let it. Sometimes you need to think but those times are fleeting and it’s not really the kind of thinking we are used to anyway. It’s thinking with flow, without judgment, knowing what to do without intellectualizing it, trusting your instincts, without the ego thinking through the problem. There are other kinds of intelligence, we just rarely take the time to cultivate them yet in sports, intelligent play doesn’t come from the intellect; it comes from feeling the game, from trusting yourself, from letting go and surrendering to the flow of the game.

Meditation has helped me a lot in this quest. It can be quite unbelievable to discover how difficult it is to turn the mind off and even more difficult to avoid berating myself for not always succeeding. I try to concentrate on my breathing and instead my mind moves to the big questions in life: why peanut butter isn’t popular in Europe for example? Then my mind moves on to seahorses. Seahorses. When was the last time I thought about seahorses? But I don’t answer that question. Instead I find my breath for half a second before my grocery list pops into my head, as if grocery shopping requires a good deal of preparation. Then I might think of the boots I saw online that morning followed by harsh and unproductive judgment that goes something like this, ‘Nice work trying to be Buddhist. How materialistic and entitled can you be; you should feel lucky to have shoes!’ then I try not to cling to that thought, which is truly an exercise in mental discipline. But I’m showing progress even if it means I follow my breath for a full second the next time.

A lot of it is fear based. As if something like grocery shopping wont go well unless I consciously think it through multiple times. Or if I don’t think about the future, I’ll miss an opportunity to be successful. I don’t even consider myself a worrier but I am a thinker and I suppose some of that is ego based as well; since I take pride in sometimes gaining insight, I cling to the activity that occasionally brings that experience about. The interesting thing though, is that most thought goes on below the surface of awareness anyway. It’s why we often wake up with the answer to a problem that we couldn’t quite figure out when we were awake. Utilizing the mind without thinking. And trusting that turning off the mind isn’t equated with turning myself off, or my dreams or my goals, after all it’s only for 15 minutes. Isn’t it kind of ridiculous that we can’t even give ourselves a 15 minutes break from conscious thought?

I let myself turn off my mind when I play however which is why I’ve found this presence a lot on the basketball court. And it truly is the best feeling in the world. It’s the time when I’m playing and completely trusting myself, feeling the game instead of thinking the game, playing with that true and honest love of the game. It’s the type of play that every player seeks whether they are aware of it or not. In the past, I found it often times because I was so intent on winning that I blocked out everything else. I was like a warrior facing death; I was so intent on preserving the self that nothing else in the world mattered. The adrenaline brings about a singular focus that relies on instinct instead of intellect.

I’ve done that plenty of times in the past. I know I can do that. So now I’ve found a new challenge: not defending the ‘self’ but letting go of the self. Not finding presence by accident or even by purpose but by surrender. Can I play relentlessly without ego? Can I play and find myself in the moment by letting go of results, by being fully present without expectations?

This is what is fascinating me these days. But its scary in a way also. My past successes have been somewhat ego based. They’ve been based on my want to be the best, on wanting to prove myself, on wanting to win. Can I still play my best without trying, without wanting, without striving for something in the future? Can I play with a relentless will to win, with a warrior mentality, without focusing on results? Can someone play without ego or is competition always about defending the ego? I don’t really know the answer to all of these questions but I’m asking them, which makes things interesting.

Ultimately I struggle with the driven side of me, the competitive, goal oriented side of me and the person that wants to be in the present, unfazed by the exterior, fully immersed in the beauty of letting go. And yet, I do believe that one can do both. I can believe in my self, my abilities, and want to win but also find the moments where I can and should let it all go. Letting go, ahhhh, the beauty of that experience. Why is it is so difficult? Can someone care without caring about results? And isn’t even asking that question in itself caring about the results?

I liken it to an artist, though I can barely draw a stick figure. An artist can have an idea of what they want to create, a picture in their mind of the result and yet, while they are creating, they must be present for every brush stroke. They can’t judge or think, they have to feel and ‘be’. The have to flow through ‘mistakes’ to find the essence of themselves as an artist within that project. They have to let go, to care only about giving their best and not about whether the finish project is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because ultimately the finished product is a direct result of how much they surrendered themselves to the moment, how fully they allowed themselves to be who they are.

If an artist second guesses themselves or let’s their mind focus on the end result, the piece doesn’t get all of them, it gets a version of themselves, one that is wrapped up in trying to prove something; a version that is trying rather than being.

And so I am trying to do the same with playing. Each time I step on the court, I’m creating something out of nothing. Basketball is my canvas and the true challenge is not in how well I can play but how fully can I be me. After all, we all should focus less on being the best and more on being our best. Those are the times in life when I feel connected most to myself. I feel a fullness, a richness of life that puts me squarely in the present and all the freedom and magnificence of just being me.