A Good Practice

When I was a kid, I loved playing football. I particularly liked what we called running patterns, meaning I’d run a quick out or deep post or a fly and my father or my friend Palmer would throw me a pass and I’d try to catch it. I could have done that all day, running after the passes over and over like a dog at the park chasing a stick. I loved the precision of the routes, and I loved most of all tracking the ball through the air as I ran, attuning my eyes and hands and body to its arced return to earth.

Technically, I was training to be a wide receiver, but my ambitions to do so professionally were fleeting at best. That does not mean this training was in vain. If you’re going to catch a pass, your mind has to be in one place and one place only. You quickly learn the difference between bringing your full attention to the route and only a portion of it. You learn that difference in dropped passes, but also in the moment-to-moment experience in your body, the instant and detailed awareness of all its parts acting fluidly together as one. You simply can’t feel that vibrating aliveness if your mind is elsewhere; you must be with yourself completely, a sensation that is as pleasurable as it is effective.

Of course, football, like any game, is about more than running and catching. It gets more and more challenging and interesting when someone is trying to stop you from catching that ball, and when you agree on the game’s purpose, which is to score more points than the other team. Scores and winning and losing add a narrative shape to our play, but they also introduce a new practice: caring about results. It’s a tricky balance, caring enough about the results to enjoy the game but also remembering that these results actually mean nothing, that nothing of value is ever won or lost at the game’s end.

Like most people I know, I trained myself to care very much about results of all kinds to the point that I came to believe they were all that mattered. The more you practice this, the more exhausting it becomes. That fatigue is useful if we pay attention to it. I never tired of running routes, though my body would occasionally need a rest. Each time I tracked that ball, each time my attention locked into the moment and my mind and body came together, I perceived life’s value, which couldn’t be won or lost, only experienced.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com