When a great group of people, all
putting their individual talents and gifts together, directed by coaching staff
and honed by plans, for a collective winning effort, reaches the grand finale
it is a vast achievement, in and of itself. But it falls distinctly flat if
they don’t score more points than the other team on Championship Day. It is a
fickle reality – so close are two teams to the reality of being champions (in
the official sense) but only one can lay claim to such a momentous fact.
But that momentous fact won’t despoil
another fact; both teams, as they prepare, only days away, experience what
perhaps they may only experience once – a championship reality in the making.
This is momentousness and it is not
something that everybody experiences.
Certainly it’s not something that
even a few people experience every day. All the hard work, not to mention the good
fortune, which has gone into a whole regular season, stands either to be richly
rewarded or to be assessed by some as a waste of time – if that can be seen as
a fair assessment.
But that is not what this article is
about.
Let us assess this issue of
momentousness: the mode of soaking it up, such that it provides us positive drive
toward the securing of The Prize: a Championship.
The Imagery of Soaking It up
There are so many thoughts and
emotions that go into a preparation period. There are nights’ sleeps, for some,
that will be interrupted, and certainly thought patterns will be driven, subconsciously,
into preoccupation.
There is also the aspect of
equilibrium, so far as performance management is concerned. It is one thing to
get enough rest and get enough mental downtime; it is precisely another to keep
a cap on the bottle, or to soak up the liquid of emotion as it might seep out,
as the mind takes leave on a flight of fancy. Sure, we say it won’t happen to
us, but stranger things have been known to happen.
Soaking up the momentousness of an
upcoming occasion, where history will be written, is not an easy feat. It
requires a certain humility to stay grounded in reality; an honouring of the
truth of a given moment.
Such a soaking up process requires us
to enjoy the moment as it comes, yet to store nothing of it that leaves us
contemplating beyond a humble discipline – unless it is a team contemplation
written, in effect, by the coaches.
***
A playoff is a momentous occasion,
just like getting married or having a baby is. Every player has a
responsibility to prepare mentally, not just physically. Preparation is a
holistic affair. Employing the ability of soaking up the high and low moments in
the preparation phase is a wise thing for each player to engage in. They remind
themselves the job’s not done yet. And they have our prayers.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment