On Friday night my true love and I watched a couple dozen little girls playing basketball at a Y on the Northshore, and you know, it was a marvelous entertainment. Yes, there were fumbles and lots of double-dribbling. There were desperate wangings up at a distant basket and red-cheeked puffing as the game traveled once again down-court. There were some wonderful pig-piles while the girls struggled heroically to wrestle free a slippery ball from the other team. But there were also some inspired plays, some clever forethought and skillful passes, and occasionally a moment of grace as a fourth-grader pelted the ball at the net with such confidence that it swished through – just as she’d known it would.
I was moved, especially, by that confidence and grace. Off the court, that girl may have trouble reading, or there may be problems at home, or she might stutter for all I know. But there at the Y, she saw the basket and hurled her small body into the air past the other players with great force and decision. She was in perfect flow and perfectly alive. Magnificent!
There must be a place for all of us to feel that boldness, that sense of making decisions effortlessly. There must be a place where we let go of looking for approval, for permission, for guidance. There must be a place where we simply act, immersed and focused. Even if we lose or fail, we bravely hurl ourselves up towards the basket.
I was not that fabulous girl on the basketball court, nor in the social court, either, where I felt awkward and ignorant much of the time. But in the arena of words and stories I was a fearless gladiator. And my passion for music emboldened me more than I can say. These were my home courts, and I’m grateful to have found them.
But now so many years later, I think that those natural areas of boldness could open up. Could we live more of our lives in that spirit? Could we divorce ourselves from the conviction that we must wait to be noticed, to be told, to be invited? Wouldn’t it be better to miss the shot than not to leap up at all? Isn’t a wrong note better than staying mute during a solo? What if we lived our whole lives with the conviction that we are in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing? What if we hurled ourselves into the press, knowing that neither success nor failure were the main concern?
What if we decided that spirit and spark were even more valuable to us than accomplishment and skill? What if we decided to shine?
