Dear Jacky,
Several months ago I went to Top Golf for the first time for my birthday. A few weeks later I received an email about a Top Golf League. Often people around me encourage me to join an intramural team or an outdoors club to “meet people” and by people they mean men.
I never join these things for two reasons:
1) These things work for girls who are athletically gifted and are very outdoorsy. They are meeting people in their element, with a common interest and probably look cute while doing it. They are not falling down a mountain (cue my last hiking episode where as my sister says “I caught a mountain with my face”).
2) I spent my twenties going to every networking event ever, every party ever, every singles event and young professionals group and church thing in hopes of meeting someone. There were voices around me making me feel like I would miss my person if I didn’t go to these things. They were wrong. You don’t miss things meant for you. When you’re chasing things and people that hard you can never really tell how someone feels about you. It’s a much better method to lean back and see who still shows up. It eliminates people who are a waste of time, people who won’t choose you and people who are never going to be who you need them to be. I’m not saying don’t reciprocate interest, I’m just saying chasing people won’t bring you what you’re looking for…maybe in the short term it looks like it but in the long term I promise it won’t. I spent years going to events and parties and all the things because I was supposed to and not because I wanted to. So I will never join anything again for anyone but for me.
I really enjoy playing golf and I’m decent for a girl. I used to play with my guy friends in high school and college but then they moved so I don’t get to play much. When I received this email, there was an option to sign up as a free agent and I immediately did. I’m all about putting myself in situations where I find joy and fun and have a chance of meeting people like me. A few weeks ago as I was playing with my team I thought to myself how happy I am to live this life and how I would never get to play in a Top Golf League on a Monday night if I had kids at home. What a blessed, blessed life I created and get to live…no offense to anyone living a different style life than mine…I just really love mine and find so much goodness in it. I am living the life that was meant for me and it makes me happy and one day maybe I’ll be over the independence and freedom and stop craving adventure but that day is not today.
Last week as I played with my team, I was watching a guy on my team aim for the targets, we’ll call him Fred. Fred is incredibly good at golf. He can sink the ball right in the center of the target. He can aim for the targets lining the back of the range and hit it. Fred picks where he wants the ball to go and he aims and with incredible accuracy he can usually get the ball to land exactly where he wants. I never really paid that much attention but I started trying to figure out how he’s so good. His skill is impressive. I asked Fred how he got so good and he said something along the lines of my parents spent thousands of dollars on lessons and I spent thousands of hours hitting really bad shots outside of those lessons. First of all what an honest answer and ya’ll know I love raw authenticity.
Isn’t precision the mark of a master of a craft?
It had me thinking about the word precision. Isn’t precision the mark of a master of a craft? It’s much easier to walk up to the range box and hit the ball as hard as you possibly can. I don’t think we really notice the progress we are making. The first week there was barely a chance I could make it to the 3rd target and last week I hit a few in the 4th target. A few weeks ago the chances I hit the target we were aiming for wasn’t great, last week one of the guys on my team before we changed screens was like go back…did you get all of them in? We checked and counted and 18/20 hits scored points. We have this saying on my team “Points is points.” I think Fred made it up but I can’t be sure. It’s what we say when the shot wasn’t great but it scored even 1 point. Maybe that’s another mantra I’ll add to my book. We should all be counting our points in life no matter how small. We should be celebrating the small victories even when we were hoping for larger victories.
But back to the idea of precision. It’s the same principle that applies to my journey as a runner. There are all types of workouts: recovery, speed, fartleks, intervals, long runs etc. etc. On the speed runs they designate a pace that could be mile pace or 5k pace or 10k pace, etc. Up through my first 5k I think we were just guessing at what these paces should be but now that we have an official 5k pace, we can use the Nike Run Club chart to find all the paces. You know it’s a lot harder to hit your pace dead on. I started using the pacer feature on my Apple Watch and it tells you if you’re ahead or behind pace and I’m almost always somewhere a good bit off the pace I’m aiming for. It’s hard to pull back when you’re supposed to be running a slower pace. That feels harder to me than speeding up to hit a pace but it is in mastering your pace that you become a better runner. It is in following the training plan. There is purpose in each type of workout and doing all the workouts at max effort isn’t going to bring you the results you want. The recovery days are just as important as the distance ones.
Each day that goes by I’m getting to be better at pacing but it’s the sign of a master runner to be able to adjust speed like putting a manual shift car into a different gear (another talent that is impressive in my opinion). Runners that can do that are seasoned, they’ve paid their dues pounding the pavement. Precision is something I find very impressive. You can find it in the most talented of artist paintings. You can find it when you see a beautifully carved piece of wood furniture. You can find it in the details of life…and isn’t that where beauty lies in the details. I hope you start looking for the precision in life. I hope you start appreciating it in other people and I hope you challenge yourself to become a lot more precise in the things you do.
I suppose this is how I entertain myself in life is by thinking about the craziest of notions and challenging myself with them. For right now the notion of discipline and precision are adding a new depth to my life. They are uncovering a life that hasn’t existed for me previously. One of empowerment and of the joy in the little things at a depth greater than ever before.
May you always hit the mark,
Molly