A Seventh Excerpt from The Spiritual Dimension of Hurdling
by Steve McGill
I was first introduced to the idea of Zen in athletic competition by two books – Phil Jackson’s Sacred Hoops and Bill Russell’s Second Wind. Jackson’s book, a memoir that focuses on his years coaching the Chicago Bulls to three straight NBA championships in 1991, 1992, and 1993, a main theme is that athletes need to enter a Zen-like state in order to perform at their best under the most stressful conditions. He talks about his own journey as an athlete, and then as a short-tempered coach who began practicing Zen principles in order to control his temper. Jackson, who would gain the nickname “Zen master” due to some of his unorthodox coaching methods and calm demeanor on the bench, argues in one chapter that the reason that basketball players play basketball is because they’re seeking those moments when they can completely lose themselves in the game. He argues that even professional athletes who are hoping to earn huge contracts and win championships are, at root, motivated by a love of the game, and by the desire to experience the blissful feeling of getting lost in the game.
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In Russell’s autobiography, there is one particular passage that stood out to me when I first read it, and that still stands out to me even though I read the book many years ago and no longer own a copy. In the passage, which is maybe a page long, he talks about a game when his Boston Celtics were engaged in a hotly contested battle with the team’s greatest rival, the Philadelphia 76ers, led by Russell’s personal rival and nemesis, Wilt Chamberlain. For a stretch of maybe five minutes, Russell says, the game had a beautiful flow to it. Rebound, outlet pass, running the floor, ball movement, a shot at the basket, rebound, sprinting back on defense, etc. Then, Russell says, one of the referees called a foul. Russell yelled at the ref, angry at the foul call. The ref looked at him, confused, because the foul was on the 76ers. But for Russell, the sound of the whistle and the subsequent stoppage of play killed the rhythm, ended the dance, and brought him back into the mundane world where the score mattered.
In writing about Jackson and Russell, I’m reminded of some of the long runs I used to go on when I was in my early-mid 40’s. Because hurdling/sprinting caused days worth of aches and pains, I relented and stopped trying to do those things. I found that distance running wasn’t nearly as painful to my lower legs. So I just started running farther since I could no longer run faster. I ran a few 5K’s, built up to 10K’s, then a few half-marathons, and even a couple full marathons. The half-marathon proved to be my favorite distance. In training, I would run for an hour every weekday morning – about 7 miles, and I’d go for a longer run one day of the weekend. While my iPod was my only companion for many of those training runs, I also linked up with one of my neighbors pretty often. His name was Brian Pattison, and his dog was named Finley. Finley was an Australian Shepherd, I think, and could run for days without getting tired.
On several of my runs through the neighborhood, I saw Brian out there with Finley, until finally we chatted one time and agreed to start running together on occasion. His house was literally about 50 yards down the road from mine, so I’d wake up, get ready, then walk over there, where I usually saw him with Finley, trying to get Finley to poop before we embarked on the run. For a stretch, while training for one of the half-marathons, we ran together pretty much every day. We were both teachers, although at different schools and different grade levels, so that gave us plenty to talk about. And the fact that I was black and he was white didn’t make for any awkward conversations when the topic turned to social issues or political issues. Ironically, he taught at a public school that was predominantly black, while I taught at a private school that was predominantly white. We could talk about anything on our runs and it never got contentious.
We lived in Knightdale, just east of Raleigh in NC. Sometimes on weekends we’d drive out to Umstead Park on the west side of Raleigh and take on the challenge of the hilly terrain there, not to mention the gigantic horse flies that menaced us to no end. Running with Brian was so cool. The rhythm created itself. If he was sneakily pushing the pace, I’d stay with him and then counter by pushing the pace myself, and we’d go back and forth like that for much of the run, always challenging each other without being petty about it. We’d converse through the beginning stages of each run before settling into silence for most of the run. It went without saying that once talking got in the way of running, it was time to stop talking. Running beside someone for 40-60 minutes without either of you saying a word is a beautiful thing. The foot strikes and the breaths create the rhythm, and become a language unto themselves. A bond forms that words can’t describe, because words played no role in the bond being formed to begin with. Makes me think, man, if people could just learn to be quiet, what a wonderful world it would be.
Brian and I had a mantra that we repeated often – I don’t remember how it got started, but it became a theme to our runs: don’t f*ck with the flow. I think Brian was the one came up with it. I think it was after I got annoyed with him one time for talking when we were well into the part of the run where we were no longer talking. “I get it,” he said, “don’t f*ck with the flow.” We’d repeat that mantra if a car got in our way while pulling out of a driveway, forcing us to slow down, or if we were running on a greenway and had to finagle our way past a family of walkers with little kids and baby strollers and dogs and everything. Bruh, don’t f*ck with the flow. It became a phrase I’d say to myself if I was grading papers at school and a student came into my office to ask a question. Or if I was at home reading a book or writing a poem and my wife or daughter would enter the room and tell me something. Like bruh, what can be that important? Don’t f*ck with the flow. But of course I wouldn’t say it out loud in those situations. I’ll even say it if I’m driving on the highway and someone is going slow in the passing lane, clogging things up. Or a big-ass truck tries to pass a big-ass truck. Like bruh, you’re killing the flow.
This flow, I came to recognize, can be found in everything. The flow of blood in the veins, the flow of thoughts in the brain, the flow of waves crashing against the shore, the flow of day turning into night, and night turning into day. That’s why Taoists say to go with the flow. The flow is already there; just align with it. Quiet your mind and align with it. Become part of it. Become one with it. Become it.
We’ve reached a point where axioms like “go with the flow” and phrases like “flow state” are used so often without full context that they’ve become kind of meaningless. That’s what our society tends to do with things that are sacred. We shrink them; we make them small. We reduce them to catch phrases and suck all the nuance out of them. People don’t realize that going with the flow goes absolutely counter to how most people operate, and is totally at odds with the approach to life that our society perpetuates as being integral to living a successful life. We are not taught to go with the flow. We are taught to go out there and take what we want because nobody is gonna give us anything. We are taught to be assertive and ambitious and to use our creativity for personal gain. As a result, we’ve created a world where it’s a lot harder to let things happen than it is to make things happen, simply because we’ve trained our brains to think in terms of making things happen. The flow is already there y’all. It’s been there since before the beginning of time. Align with it. Become part of it. Become one with it. Become it. And you’ll run a whole lot faster, with a whole lot less effort.
It’s not just Phil and Bill and me and Brian. I’d argue that every athlete is either fully conscious or at least subconsciously aware of this spiritual dimension to athletic competition. Some embrace it more than others, explore it more fully than others, but everyone senses it. How can it be any other way? It’s part of the human experience. Everything is spiritual, even if the spiritual dimension remains hidden from the conscious mind. It exists even for those who choose to ignore or who claim not to care about it. It’s there like the sun is there, like the trees and fields and rivers and mountains are there. It doesn’t need our acknowledgment to exist. But for those who do embrace it, who do explore it, it enriches their entire lives and enables them to enrich the lives of others in a deeply meaningful way and to an extreme degree.
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