Golf is just a perfect analogy for my life right now. Kind of scary when i start listing the paralells. Let me tell you a story.
Some number of years ago, I started playing golf. And I decided that this was something I 'enjoyed' so I got my own set of golf clubs. You can't play the game if you don't have the clubs...well it turned out that you can't play the game with clubs either. For those of you that don't golf, please continue reading. Just substitute golf for something in your life that frustrates you to your very core and yet somehow has an alluring way of bringing you back again and again. Anyways, back to the story.
So I got my clubs and i started golfing, not all the time, but once in a while. In the beginning i wasn't very good, but i gave myself a grace period because i was just learning. I mean, let's cut ourselves some slack here right? As time went on, my golf game didn't improve and I had to come to the realization that the grace period was over and i just sucked at golf. This is a piece of humble pie that i have eaten many times and yet always goes down with a harsh and terrible after taste. But I am not a quitter. After a certain point in my life, I cannot remember quitting anything. So I faced into the wind, manned up, and kept golfing...poorly.
Somewhere along the line, I don't know when... but somewhere, I realised there is something fundamentally wrong with my golf game. My swing was all wrong. My approach to the game was completely off, and I was suffering the consequences. Looking back...it had always been wrong. From the first time I picked up a club, it was wrong. So i had to go back to the drawing board. I had to suck it up and admit that the habits i had built and the way i was playing the game was wrong. After years of playing, I scrapped everything and started from scratch. Not because I wanted to, but because it was necessary.
If i was ever going to be good at this game i would have to unlearn everything i knew and learn everything i was missing. My desire to get better was sincere, so I worked at it. I went to the driving range, I read golf magazines, I researched online, and practiced my swing in our basement at 1:00 in the a.m. Then came my chance to put all of my new found skills to the test. My chance to see all of my progress and reap all the rewards for my hard work. You know what? I shot one of the worst games in my life. Nothing short of disastrous. My game came crashing down around me like glass walls.
And in a sense i was feeling a little shattered myself. All of that effort, all of that time, all of that rewiring of my entire approach and it didn't make a lick of difference. I still suck.
My father-in-law asked me once,
"Do you know why they call it golf?"
"No" I said.
"...because f*ck was taken."
That made me laugh. It is so true. The game brings out the worst in you, however...like most things that bring out the worst in you, it inherently has the potential to bring out the best in you.
So with my tail tucked neatly between my legs and my head down, I drudge forward. Hoping for that one day when i realize that things are better. Hoping for that perfect shot, that perfect round, that perfect day. And I step up to the whites and look in my golf bag at my clubs knowing that there are a few of them that will be hurled through the air during a tantrum of frustration in its purest form. But what am I going to do? Stop playing? I can't stop playing. So I guess I better keep trying to improve. Ahh golf....so much like life. Chalked full of frustration and dripping with irony.... with just enough glimmer of hope to suck you in to the next round. I hate this game... See you on the first tee.
