Taking it personally

I’m a pretty passionate guy. I get fired up over small injustices, I get carried away with points that don’t matter, and anyone who really knows me is right now choking back indignity at the magnitude of such an understatement. I take things to heart and then stitch it all to my sleeve. I rant. I rave.

Someone close once suggested I could take life about one thousand percent less personally and be just fine, not to mention immeasurably less stressed. I protested that you don’t make friends with salad. A bit obtuse to count as a serious rebuttal, I went on to argue that they were mistaking my cynical realism with taking the world too seriously. Just because I think things by and large don’t work out and the universe is overwhelmingly disappointing doesn’t mean I don’t think it is worth trying for a better world. I lost the argument.

The thing I’m interested in is the inconstant but very real threshold of frustration where playing competitive sport changes from healthy catharsis to compounding anxiety. I love – really LOVE – playing hard on the basketball court. There are few things more satisfying, win or lose, than leaving every skerrick of energy out on the court. Having had a difficult week or personal disappointment can be fuel to channel so much negative energy and transform it into focus and drive and release.

But there is a point, an unknowable point, where the negative energy overwhelms the possibility for transformation. No matter how much I want a game or how hard I play or how determined I am to leave all the other shit at the door, I’ll never play well. I’ll never feel the release. Those games are always bluntly personal. And of course there is an exponential relationship between the possibility of playing well and the possibility of letting go of everything else. Like compound interest in the worst tangible way.Those days I just shouldn’t play, but the promise of relief is so seductive. I just don’t know any way of coming down far enough on those days, to a calm enough headspace that the game will just be a game. I mean, it’s all well and good to WANT to take life one thousand percent less personally. Much harder to do when life is so damn personal…