For many of us, athletics have played an important role in our development and maturation into and throughout adulthood. For some, childhood and young adult sports programs were part of the fabric of experience growing up and as adults many continue the participation in athletic endeavors in order to reap enjoyment, stay in shape, and experience the excitement of victory. But are athletics, and the games through which they are manifested, strictly an exercise in winning or can they be looked at metaphorically to unlock that which has remained hidden in our self awareness and fulfillment?
In examining this question, a key factor to consider is how does one measure success and how does that relate to the athletic pursuit. Is winning the goal to focus on? In youth sports today, particularly the traveling variety, winning seems to be paramount and the measure by which success is measured. And accepting that premise, how does this translate to the adult experience? In Western culture, participation in team sports has been described as a foundation element for a successful and fulfilling life. The lessons of team sports – sublimation of the self for the greater good, understanding one’s role and diligently doing one’s job, the appreciation of teamwork – fit well into the paradigm of a life well lived. As adults, however, the opportunity to pursue team sports becomes diminished and the focus turns to individual performance and the contemplation of the phenomenon known as “personal best”.
The concept of a personal best is both mysterious and paradoxical. The idea is to perform better than ever before as measured by that which is used to keep score. The paradox lies in the theory that one performs best by disengaging from score and pursuing optimal performance as an unconscious, integrated set of movements and reactions where the score or measurement seems to take care of itself. In his book Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigal wrote “Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer by surprise.” It is this state of unconscious consciousness that we search for in athletics - whether it is in pursuit of a winning score or the sublime experience where the athlete finds that state of flow.
Goals are important in life, to be sure. They drive us to planning and execution of that plan as part of the process of living. Athletics can be seen much the same way – as a process which achievable milestones and goals are identified and realized. Or is it more useful to view sports as transcendent and as a gateway to an acceptance of the realities and beauty of the energy in the world around us? As George Leonard put it in The Ultimate Athlete, “ The body of the ultimate athlete – fat or thin, short or tall – summons us toward the rebirth of the self and, in time, the unfolding of a new world.” It is this unfolding which holds the true purpose of athletics and that which takes the ideas of winning and personal best and pushes them to the side in favor of self awareness, fulfillment and joy.