(Today's Music: Photograph by 12 Stones)
Lesson Five: There Is No Strength Without Pain
This one is quite familiar to most. This lesson is more succinctly quoted as "No Pain, No Gain." Similar to the previous lesson, this one just further punctuates the point that it's really the hardships in our lives that define who we are.
We've almost reached the end of the basketball season for my boys. Over the course of the season they (well, some of them anyway) have finally gotten it through their heads that it's going to take work, work that hurts, if they want to achieve the strength and endurance they will need to win. Sometimes that pain is physical, sometimes it's not. We held practices over Christmas break, for example. That was psychologically painful to many of them, but it meant that when they came back in January, they hadn't lost their edge. It was clearly worth it to them then and they have, so far, gone undefeated in January.
I've seen one movie that got this right. Star Trek V. The movie sucked, but they got this right. For those of you who don't remember, the focus of the movie is a half brother of Spock's that has ability to reach into people's minds, pull out their biggest fear, make them face it, then absorb their pain. This liberates these people and makes them fiercely loyal to him. He then steals the Enterprise in a quest to find where God lives (Voyage of the Dawn Treader, anyone?). Anyway, when Dr. McCoy tries to convince Captain Kirk to take the crazy Vulcan up on his offer, Kirk responds, "Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!" Regrettably, perhaps the only good thing about Star Trek V.
I know. Star Trek quotes. I'm not only a geek, I'm an old geek.
The lesson is simple: if you want something, you're going to have to work for it.
We had a player last year who was phenomenal. He was, and possibly will be, the best 8th grade basketball player I've ever seen. We'll call him Timmy. Timmy routinely scored over 30 points per game. He could dribble and shoot and there was often no need for the coach because Timmy already knew more than the coach. Not that he was prideful and arrogant. Quite the opposite. He was confident, but not cocky. He was also a huge crutch for the team. There were some other really talented boys on this team, but they had no reason to work. We didn't have a team. We had the Timmy show with 4 accompanying custodians to try to clean things up when Timmy occasionally missed a shot or was sitting on the bench for a rest. We had a guard who launched ill-advised 3-pointers (that rarely went in) and who never learned what it meant to be a leader because he never had to be. He never had to endure the pain of pushing his pride aside for the sake of the team because Timmy bore that burden. We had a forward who was, by nature, a hard worker and truly had a Jesus heart. But he, too, never had to step up and lead. He worked hard, but really only for himself. Again, Timmy bore the burder of leading the team. Timmy took the pain of the one loss we had when he played and grew stronger for it, as much as he could gain strength when playing for coaches that knew less about basketball than he.
And maybe that's where this is leading. There are really two kinds of pain: physical pain and psychological (emotional) pain. At some point, athletes learn that the physical kind is much less disturbing than the psychological. It hurts less to be tired with aching muscles than it does to have failed in your weakness and to have let your team down. And so they run harder and learn more so that when it comes time to perform they are ready. They can stand in strength and declare "Not Today!" and "It Doesn't Matter!" and "Finish It!" Or they can say those same three things while sitting in defeat and those things mean something very different.
You endure the pain to gain strength.
You face failure to grow and don't fear failure.
You never stop until you're finished.
You dismiss past failure or looming obstacles as irrelevant and focus on the now.
You adopt an attitude of success that leaves no room for failure.
It's really got nothing to do with basketball. But it has direct relevance to basketball because it applies to any athlete in any sport. But it's not about sports. Yet it has direct relevance to sports because it applies to everything in life.
Think it. Do it. Finish it. Learn from it. Work at it.
Make Jesus proud.
