Enough - part I
So how does one approach coming back, and equally so, moving on.
When young, the body is Mission Control while the brain tags along and hopefully sponges up all there is to learn from the journeys. In time, the mind becomes the training partner of the body, not setting the pace, but at least in stride.
Then as we age, and the body, in turn(s), relies on the mind to prompt the body, based upon years of experience so that we can be in the right place, make the right moves, and stay in the game. That’s when the teeter begins to totter the other way.
So the hard line to cross is not the next finish line, but the next starting line. At what point should I make stubbornness step down? Some might think that’s the same as vanity, but for anyone who’s ever seen their own performance on film, and then can run that tape in your head alongside a professional performance –it re-jiggers your POV quickly and vanity is evaporated immediately. If it still clings, then it’s time for either a new eyeglass prescription or an ego enema.
Personally, I’d been hoping that a recent series of injections would restore my knee enough that I might play one or two more seasons of soccer, pleeease, just one or two or three more. Sixteen more games on that sea of green, the dew on the grass, the calls of “man on” and ”drop” and “got time.” Just to fit back in the flow of that game once again – the pass-move-pass – almost like the angles and ricochets on a pool table, the ball going pock-pock-pock as it moves from one foot to the next to a third, all a swirl of motion and anticipation.
But the treatments could not bring the joint back. And any display of “indomitable spirit” herein would result in “impossible movement” the next morning.
So the mind needs to be the stronger one here, the new pacesetter. It’s time for the body and the chutzpah to move over, move back, and move on.
So I need to come back in other ways, on other fields. Equal tests of mettle and temper (as in metal). God I loved to play that game. Sorry, Chauncey Gardener - watching is just not the same.