My senior year in high school I started out being the punt returner. I lost that assignment by the first half of the first game.
I had won the job by being the best at it during summer practice. We practiced during the day--but games were played at night. In games, as the football flew high off the punter's foot at night, I'd lose sight of it in the black sky and the glare of stadium lights.
I wore glasses in class because I'm nearsighted. But I did alright without them in practice and did NOT want to bother with goggle glasses or contacts for football. Hated the thought of it.
So on the very first punt in the very first game of the season I watched a football fly off a punter's foot and disappear--then suddenly reappear so close to me that I jumped aside so it wouldn't touch me--which would have made the ball 'live' and given the other team a great chance to recover it on our 25 yard line.
When I got back to the sideline the coach said very kindly, "Hudson! What the hell do you think you're doing out there!"
On the next punt I focused with all my might. Still lost it, but was ready for it to reappear again. Ha! I called for a fair catch--meaning I couldn't run with the ball but the other team couldn't tackle me either. I made a perfect catch!
Then looked around and nobody was close enough to tackle me anyway. I could have run for 10 or who knows how many more yards. That was it for me as the punt returner. I got replaced.
Yet I did just fine all year as the kickoff returner. Those kicks don't go as high--I could see the ball all the way. And the other team doesn't have time to get close before you catch it--there's not all that 'instant' pressure.
I think about that game, that season now. It's potentially a helpful paradigm for solving problems, stuck places, dilemmas. "OMG, I can't see the ball." Panic. Frustration. Public failure!
Or corrective lenses. My choice.
It would have been nice if after that first game one of the coaches had told me to get off my butt and go to the ophthalmologist. But nobody did. It was simply up to me--and stubborn resistance to a relatively simple solution was the main ball I dropped that season of life.
One of the great gifts of mindfulness teaching is its insistence that Everything is Workable. Much of the work of getting unstuck is learning to notice and work with our own special kinds of resistance.
Notice what it is
where it is
what it feels like
what's actually going in on in our minds and hearts that keeps us resisting possible solutions to problems that are messing with and messing up our lives.
"Everything is workable" doesn't mean that we can mold life to get what we want and avoid what we don't want. It simply and profoundly means that every problem has a way to be worked with wisely. Inherent in the process is a growing commitment to trust workability-. Out of that trust comes a certain gameness to simply try working with life's problems and our resistances more often.
Every few months or so, from trusting this, doing this, perking up and considering yet again that everything is potentially workable, the trusting increases and the doing gets done more often.
Every few months or so we look around and notice that our seeing is sharper--even when the sky is dark or the glare is nearly blinding.
We often also notice that 'now' we have one or two fewer stuck places in our lives.
