My Zen Coach

Right now I am struggling to wind up a never ending thesis. Sometimes its funny the way something which is second nature to you becomes a Herculean task when you don those calipers and measure it to a nanometer for perfection, even before the words fall onto the paper. As if you fear that what falls might not be the perfect piece of work that you would like it to be, or deem it to be.

Falling… yesterday an excruciating hour was spent on trying to fall… one of the Zen of the mind attempts being instilled into me through a simple game of frizbee… according to my buddy, I am too protective and too aware of myself.. too aware to not want to get hurt. An hour was spent with the Frisbee flung in a zillion directions with me trying my best to not look at the ground and to just fly with my eyes on the Frisbee, fall and get that catch right when I fell… I failed.

I cant help but look at the ground… and the moment I did, I slowed down, and was more rooted there than ever, letting go of the catch I leaped for a while back.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of beings can just let go and fall, with no care for whether they got their catch or they didn’t… they got hurt or not and just fall… after all ‘its not gonna kill you’, like he says… ‘all that would happen is you’d break a leg or two or a neck but that’s ok... you just get right back on your feet and play again...’

At times we play in a stadium, just the two of us with floodlight. This once we were throwing a baseball at each other to catch with no baseball gloves. Every once in a while I would go into a ‘it hurts it hurts’… till finally exasperated he’d yelled at me for being a sissy… and angry, I threw the ball on the ground and stomped out of the stadium onto the stands… he’d followed me back… yelled back… which ended up with ‘learn to take a little hurt… it helps and wont hurt you so much..’ and I’d played till my fingers bled, didn’t stop, and it stopped hurting…

Today it was the tennis court… ‘you never give your 100% to a game’, he yelled across the court. ‘I don’t, because I feel its pointless giving a 100% for inconsequential things’, I yelled back. ‘Play like you have to get each of those balls across and that’s all you need to do…’ I do play, but my mind is an ocean of thoughts where thoughts come and recede even in between a game. Because for me just leisurely shots and returns are enough. It didn’t matter if I missed a ball or didn’t get it across the net, my argument being there’s always the next shot. We’d shot balls to and fro, with him yelling all the while to concentrate on the ball… at one point his voice went a decibel higher, and I lost my temper.. sending a sizzling shot right across the court.. ‘why did you have to hit that hard..’ he asked me.. ‘cause I was angry’, I replied. ‘well, if you want to vent out your frustration, go see a shrink, don’t take it out on a tennis court’, he shouted. And my thoughts receded again… ‘DON’T THINK! STOP THINKING… just play the goddamn game…’ he continued yelling. And I played and played hard enough to learnt to fly across the court and be in sync with the ball, for once… for once I moved up a notch better than from where I was… not that I was good as yet.. but atleast I was getting better…

‘You know, sports teaches you a lot about life… its all about deciding for yourself what you want to do and just letting yourself go and following it… almost instinctively… and you can never go wrong’, his last word of wisdom… ‘and you know when you were playing your best… when I hit those shots really fast..’, he said… ‘that’s because I was not thinking anymore…’, I replied and he smiled a QED smile…