PURSUITS
As I've said before, golf is one of many unrequited loves in my life. I love golf but it doesn't love me. I can't play as well as I would like and I seem to get a little worse with every passing year. Why do I keep trying? As with all my unrequited loves, I continue to pursue it, in the faint hope that I will overcome the barriers to good play, to full enjoyment of the sport, to more of the exquisite pleasure of a well-struck golf shot. But as soon as I wrote the last sentence, I realized it was wrong. I continue to pursue it because of the pleasure of pursuit. It's probable that if the pursuit ended I wouldn't enjoy golf as much. The good shots are probably more enjoyable because of the bad shots surrounding them, the continued effort to improve is probably an essential part of golf, the pot of gold in golf can never be reached and I don't want it to be.
I think most worthwhile pursuits are like golf. It's the chase that is the most fun. The effort to succeed is more important than success. In pursuing all of my unrequited loves, I don't become discouraged by lack of success. I continue to hope, to the point that I think hope is better than fulfillment. I wonder if I deliberately move the targets so I won't lose the fun of pursuit, won't be disappointed by the fruits of success. I sometimes argue with myself: why do you keep trying new things, new processes, new approaches? Why don't you stick to a target and be content with reaching the target?
Sometimes I think that my age demands acceptance, that I'm too old to continue my pursuits. But then I realize that inside this old body there's a young man, full of energy and excitement, ready to try new things, eager to chase the elusive loves of my life. I often joke that a full body transplant will solve all my problems. I'll have all my experience in a young body and do a better job of pursuing my goals, eliminate the mistakes of a lifetime. But lately I've begun to think that there's nothing to that idea, even if it was possible. If I had the young body, I'd still move the targets so I wouldn't stop trying, so I wouldn't become contented. Maybe, I sometimes think, contentment is death, contentment is stultifying, contentment is to be avoided.
I had a friend long ago who said that happy people don't do anything, that happy people don't try to improve their lives because they accept their lives as they are. He used to say that perfect lives eliminate ambition. Why try to change the perfect, why strive to improve on perfection? Viewed another way, why try to fix something that isn't broken? I think you can be happy with where you are and still strive to improve. There is no perfection in human experience, only degrees of imperfection.
If this seems to represent a change in me, it's only a change in explanation. I've lived the life of discontent, of continually trying to do things better, the life of hunting for things I never quite get. It's not that I resist happiness, that I don't want contentment at some point in my life, it's that I feel myself too young to stop trying, too young to accept things as they are, too young to think that anything's impossible. Those around me may think I'm fooling myself, but I genuinely believe that everything's still ahead of me, that I can continue to have the fun of looking for better things, better relationships, better skills for many years.
(Other times I think I'm too tired, too weak, too old to learn new things, find new targets, keep up with the chase. But those times are rare and usually come when I'm disappointed in the attitude of others, younger than me, who want to stop trying, to assume that nothing can be better, to become smug and self-satisfied.) So my message is this: Be happy in hunting for what you want but don't be contented too easily or too early. Keep trying to improve for your entire life. I hope you find a loving companion to walk with you in the quest (because you only need one loving companion; once you've found him or her, make that the exception to the rule of continually seeking improvement,) Enjoy the pursuit of happiness, but don't accept that you've done all you can as long as you can still move to the first tee. Keep working on improvements as long as you can still breathe.
10-14-02
Home Page 2002 Archives 2001 Archives 2000 Archives 1999 Archives