Free your mind… and your ass will follow. ~ Funkadelic

Why do I continue to play this ridiculous game? A fair question to ask about anything one does, I suppose. Golf, collecting stamps, line dancing, gardening – hard to see how anybody can really contend that these sorts of activities are making the world a better place, right? Well… maybe not so fast there. We should stop and listen to what a certain Chinese-American had to say about an equally dubious practice known as the martial arts.

This 1971 interview of Bruce Lee by Pierre Berton will take about twenty-five minutes of your time. What? I have stamps to collect! But if you prefer to continue reading on and migrate over to YouTube at a later date, just know that these are the two primary ideas from Mr. Lee that I want to focus on here. To paraphrase —

I do not believe in styles. I believe in honestly expressing myself as a human being.

Wait, aren’t we just talking about knocking a little white ball around a field? Yes. And no.

It seems that almost everything human beings spend their time doing is absurd on some level. With that, we can just go through the motions and pass the time – oh the masses! We can be hyper aware of the absurdity and practice a finely tuned post modern detached irony – oh the hipsters! Or we can be so dreadfully earnest – oh the annoying! But maybe there is a different way, one that recognizes all the flaws and struggles of humanity but still aims for something a bit more.

I want to approach golf like Bruce Lee approached martial arts – unconcerned by convention but aware enough to avoid simply creating a new dogma. When I started writing this blog I was playing persimmon woods and I put a bit of a stake in the ground around that. This , I came to feel, was folly. Equipment, technique, style – these are all components of the game for sure. But like the classic zen phrase says, do not confuse the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.

A quick side note on equipment. This summer I started experimenting with a modern driver and fairway metals. The experiment has been both fun and rewarding. More on those specifics in an upcoming post. Ok, back to shallow water deep thoughts.

This morning I played a round, and from the first tee I had a case of monkey mind. I couldn’t stop thinking thinking thinking and this made my actions a bit jittery. Two things I observed – I was going too fast from the moment I got out of bed and I wasn’t prepared to calm my thoughts once on the golf course. So I just let it be and tried to focus on making a score. Actually I did pretty well with that, some nice short game action holding the round together. But I was never comfortable and this gap is something I need to work on. Under slightly different conditions, a case of the unrelenting monkey mind could have disastrous results. Some thoughtful training is needed on this front, and it is probably as simple as physically slowing down and steadying the breath.

Self reflection is a tricky thing. One can end up stuck in the dreaded analysis paralysis. On the other hand, an unexamined life is a bit of a wasted opportunity. I want to be authentic to my nature but also strive to improve. Anything more or anything less would not be an honest expression of this human being.