This game is 70% mental and only 30% physical. You can't let stuff get to you. Everybody gets frustrated, but you've got to take a deep breath, recover, and focus. I was playing a game with a guy recently, one of the kids I teach, and he kept hitting the ball in the net. I...
This is what my coach was saying as I was standing on the court with two other players, willing the tears welling up in my eyes not to fall. I was frustrated, and I was angry, and my coach had been telling me over and over to move and square up with the ball, but I was always a step or two away from where I needed to be, and it was wearing on me.
I'm frustrated, and I don't handle frustration well, I told him before he began his speech.
I was passing at the time and consistently bumping it too far above the setter's head, but I wasn't mad about the passing. I was frustrated with setting, and it was creeping into everything I was doing by this point.
I've been training with my coach for the last four months, and my hand sets are still just as bad as they were before. I have made huge leaps and gains in everything else, but this one important skill continues to evade me. The worst part, the thing that bothered me most, was that we hadn't been spending any time on it during training. How in the hell am I supposed to get better at this skill if I never get any reps or instruction in it?
...So let it go and give me everything you've got. I was still simultaneously tearing up and scowling when he ended his speech with this line, but I managed to get it together long enough to finish out the drill.
I brought him money to pay him, and he stopped me. Are you okay? Is something going on? he asked.
I'm just mad because I'm a terrible hand setter. I can't seem to get the hang of it, I said.
So we sat down, and he told me straight up: You're not a setter. You're a hitter and a blocker. You need to focus on your offensive strategy: your hits, your shots, and your court IQ. You don't need to be a good setter. You can incorporate that into your game slowly.
We talked about it for a little while longer, and I felt better. A lot better. See, I keep forgetting that--despite being good at a lot of things--I am not ever going to be good at everything. I think I know it deep down, but I'm still haunted by that horrible, well-intentioned saying we used to hear all the time as kids: "You can be whatever you want to be. You can do whatever you put your mind to." In a sense, it's true. If I really put in the time, I could be at least a halfway decent setter. But why? Why take away from time I could be spending working on passing and hitting and blocking?
It reminds me of a training that I did with the Archdiocese of New Orleans for extraordinary ministers of the eucharist (also known as people who give communion). The training was four hours long, which I thought upfront was a ridiculous amount of time to spend at church just to learn how to say "The Body of Christ" and place a wafer in someone's hands. But instead of spending four hours practicing a simple gesture, we spent most of that time talking about the doctrine behind communion, as well as what it means to be a minister. And one of the big takeaways that the priest focused on was: Respect your role.
Not Respect your role like be grateful for it or something, but in the sense that as ministers, we have one specific job, and we need to do that one job well. We need to leave the other jobs for the other ministers who are meant to do them. I loved this. It runs counter to most of what we experience in life, where the ability to multi-task is an advertised skill and being able to wear many hats is an expectation. Some may interpret the point as a ploy to keep people down or exert undue authority, but the fact of the matter is, we do one thing better than we do ten things. And in a church that considers mindfulness and meditative prayer highly valuable, and which aims to help people refocus on the essentials of life, it seems only right that we should be expected to contribute one role and to contribute it well.
So, I'm not a setter. I'm letting go that piece of the game, and I'm letting others more equipped for the job take over. I will step in when needed, and I will probably bump set the whole time so I don't double everything and lose all the points, but I won't let it get me down. Yes, I still envy the people who can make the ball float perfectly through the air to exactly the right location, but I will have to keep envying them. Nobody ever said jealousy got you what you wanted.
Before I close this post, I want to add a prayer that I found inside the packet given to us at ministry training. I was surprised that I'd never heard it before, or that I didn't remember it, but I read it for the first time the day after I closed on my house, and it seemed to fit into my life perfectly at that moment (and continues to feel that way, even as I read it again now). I hope you get something out of it, too.
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following
your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this,
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
-Thomas Merton
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