This One’s for You
I never really got into basketball seriously aside from some daydreams as every kid that grew up in the 90s did who saw the phenomenon of Michael Jordan on the television. I went so far as to commit once to a half-hearted attempt at intermural basketball in late elementary or early middle school. I can’t remember exactly when because it never really stuck. But, if I did it at all, I did it at least in part because of Michael Jordan.
During that time — however half-hearted my attempt might have been — I often imagined myself as a basketball star like him and even slept with my basketball in my bed on occasion, imagining that always keeping it nearby would somehow make me a better player.
In a sense, I was right because, perhaps, things would have been different had I saw in that habit an inkling of what could be inferred in the image of Mike making his no-look free throw. You see, it wasn’t so much sleeping with the basketball like it was a teddy bear that one would be right about, but rather the impending effect such a habit might ultimately prove to have on a person’s life. It would be — however unlikely at the time — as if to recognize in the moment that such an image of one’s self tucked in beside a basketball could ultimately prove to be a memory pregnant with a symbolic meaning once we had occasion to reflect on it later in life.
Though we might only see the basketball and the child in the bed, there is without a doubt something more taking place. Because a basketball taking the place of what would normally have been a teddy bear represents an important difference, if we care to consider what might be occupying our own minds if we were tucking a basketball in beside ourselves instead.
Beyond the unstudied image alone, what the child is experiencing is an act that is pregnant with something much deeper. Because we know, as we must surely know about ourselves, that in the child there is a world of daydream and nightmare occurring and all the varieties of thought in between in which, like the teddy bear, we are hopeful that that basketball will relieve those more stressful aspects. We could say, with very little doubt, that that child is hoping to replace some of their fears with a comfort they gain by, instead, thinking about basketball.
So we might ask ourselves, will there ultimately prove to be a difference between a child’s aptitude for the game who has spent several years leading up to their first forays on a team tucked in beside a basketball at night, as opposed to another child who has not given the same degree of thought in the years leading up to their first game?
What that image might represent isn’t merely a child’s silly but nonetheless adorable behavior associated with their enjoyment of basketball, but instead what could ultimately prove to be a defining difference in there knowledge of the tactics of the game, at least. Because it by no means seems like a stretch of the imagination to consider that a child daydreaming about spin passes and fade away jumpers day in and day out would understand in some vague sense why the tactic is being used or would be more prepared to comprehend when to use the tactic once they see and engage with the dynamics of an actual game.
But, however imaginative a children may be, they are indefinitely impressionable, and the mere fact of being dedicated — or what might otherwise be thought of as fanciful — enough to be like Mike, will by no means interrupt the influences of a world that is so easily swayed by the appearance of perfection and simply cannot imagine the will it takes to get there. Because it wasn’t perfection that got Mike to that free-throw line, it was the will to get to there.
This, of course, is to say little concerning the fact that the fantasy of perfection is itself a fantastic corruption in our understanding of whether or not flaws and mistakes are part and parcel with what is ultimately only the appearance of perfection in his no-look free throw because, as captivating as a world of perfection may be, such imaginings are a severe hinderance to our ambitions if we cannot also imagine the tireless years of dedication it took to get there.
Michael Jordan’s dedication does not only reveal to us what might be found on the basketball court. It also reveals to us a similarity across all human experience as a whole, because why would we call any human a human if there were not vastly more similarities between us than differences? With that in mind, we might conjecture a further step in what many toilsome years of dedication in another arena of expertise might accumulate to.
This arena is related through a brief story of an old guru. For many years, well before the guru was ever known or thought of as a guru, she went to a cave to live, study and meditate. By some unmistakable inspiration, she was instilled with images of mandalas.¹
Through her meditations and study, she began to illustrate mandalas, though all seemed to amount to little more than a vague inkling of the mystical power the images possessed in her imagination. Her painstaking attention to detail seemed to always come up short or deficient or imperfect. But there was, nevertheless, a sense of something impending within each of them, as if her search for enlightenment were leading her somewhere nearer but, as yet, only just out of reach.
After many many years of solitude and unwavering dedication to her studies, meditation, and numerous attempts at illustrating the images of her mandala, which she believed represented harmonious spiritual enlightenment, the fledgling guru one day finished another, and after looking it over, it dawned on her that, despite some imperfections, she seemed to have captured on paper the mystical otherworldly image that had previously occupied only her imagination. It seemed she had brought the image into a real tangible artifact that could be held and looked upon by anyone. And as she looked over her illustration, it seemed that she might change the world if only she could show it to others. She thought to herself, they need only look to be gripped in a moment with their own peace and enlightenment, to see the way and the error of what might have otherwise been had they not seen it.
Though it soon became clear that merely seeing the image was not enough, she was nonetheless able through much coercion to find a few who were willing by patience or kindness or charity to be her pupils. Though charity and patience it may have been for many for those that stayed they saw something in her as well. What they saw was one possessed of the conviction and who exuded through her presence the possession of enlightenment. It was the beauty and clarity of her illustration and the fact of her conviction while in her presence that attracted them.
Over and over they drew as near a facsimile to the original as they could muster. Most quit, and even though they seemed to understand that there was something there that could not be expressed directly, they did not seem to grasp the depths held within themselves and neither did their mandalas. There was some missing piece to the mere drawing of the mandala, however precise each attempt seemed to be. There was some unnamable something that was felt to have been left out or was leaving.
After much contemplation on the matter and concern that she had been severely mistaken, she began to understand the folly of her pupilage. The woman came to understand that what was at stake was not that the pupils need only look or draw the mandala to see the way, for she realized upon further thought that that could not have anymore been the key to what she had ultimately created than it could be to anyone else. It was plain as she stood before the image she had recreated, that, even though it had come to her in a moment, that moment had been preceded by many long years. Enlightenment, she realized, could not simply be bestowed upon one by merely casting the gaze upon an image, however captivating it may be. There was something impending in the image, whatever it was, that she knew was beyond even herself. And though her image may draw some to it and to her pupilage, they will inevitably be mystified by the meaning contained in that which took her so much toil and effort to illuminate.
She knew, then, that it was not that enlightenment could be seen by simply looking upon an artifact of enlightenment, but that it was the path itself that had ultimately instilled the way in her, and that was what she had unknowingly been guiding her pupils toward. It was her years of study, meditation, and unwavering dedication to understand that had ultimately landed her upon that moment of epiphany. By drawing the mandala the guru had made, the pupils were, in essence, turning the whole process on its head.
Though possessing something more that many had a vague inkling of, her mandala possessed what did not seem to have left or was leaving. It was a symbol not only of what was beyond her, but of her dedication to the way there and the way forward, to a calming of the spirit, and, what’s more, it was a symbol that was possessed of the desire not to will others to follow her but to show them a way to find it for themselves. She knew that that was the impending something that could not simply be conveyed by a mere recreation of her own mandala. It had to be each pupil’s own, to come from their own long, toilsome effort.
Though Michael Jordan may not be a guru in the typical sense, what can be inferred from the image of his no-look free throw is not that of perfection but unimaginable dedication, though unimaginable only in the typical sense, because what many often mistake for lucky perfection is what is truly actualized through the will to put the daydream on the ground to get there. The basketball to Jordan is like the mandala in the guru’s imagination. It is a symbol of the way forward. And, likewise, the same can be said of the child who has replaced the teddy bear with his own symbol of transformation².
When we see Michael Jordan calling upon the mastery of his craft with such apparent effortlessness, we might consider the image a step further: that Michael Jordan himself can be a symbol of our own possibility for transformation. When I see him nailing that free-throw, I don’t see Jordan making a shit talker eat his words, though, at a glance, it is clear that he has done that. I see years of work. I see daydreams too. I see nightmares and sleepless nights followed by tireless hours spent honing his craft. Much like an iceberg in which only a small portion of the whole mass of the thing is seen above the surface, I see this free throw as only a brief moment that has come after the accumulation of every day he spent working to get there.
Like the mandala, Jordan’s no-look free throw can be a symbol as any symbol might be. It is pregnant with something more. Take, for instance, what might be said in the space of a few words in a story or poem of an impeccably placed clock hung in the corner of a dinner scene as two lovers look across a table at one another, or the slip of the tongue of a soon-to-be Orwellian style despot who betrays his actual intentions for tyranny in his climb up the political ladder, or the white of the whale in Moby Dick being the innocent purity of nature’s indifference for violence.
A symbol indicates something beyond ourselves we cannot always put into words. And a symbol of transformation indicates something that draws us forward by indicating to us what is beyond our present capacity. It is a provoking of the will to become that daydream of the basketball star or to understand the guru’s enlightenment.
Like the symbols related above, what a symbol says can just be expressed literally and often not at all, for even as I finish the final edits of this little essay it seems that I have not quite landed my point as clearly as I would have liked. More often than not, what is accomplished is a revealing of more possibility as opposed to a single, clearly defined path.
Nonetheless, I don’t see the shit talker eating his words in MJ’s free throw or a champion proving again that he is a champion. In that image, there is a daydreamer who grew up and chose to put his feet on the ground and realized the difference between a daydream and a reality and what it would take to get there. Much like the guru who only realized after the fact that she had always seen a light at the end of the tunnel, what the guru didn’t see was how long it would take to get there or even, ultimately, what that message would prove to be. And once she did get there, what she realized was that illumination would come with the way there and not simply in the attaining of the destination itself. For didn’t the guru find further enlightenment at a point in which she had previously believed was her final destination?
It's strange how often we ignore the possibility of transformation and that we are surprised at nightmares later in life, as if they meant nothing in terms of what we could have been, for there is no shortage of evidence to indicate to us what others have done or opted out of or neglected or refused in the past and where that got them, or, rather, where it didn’t.
It seems we too often stumble upon the impressions of a world that sees what is easy or normal as vital because it can only see perfection in what is beyond it. Despite how often we tell ourselves to refuse or ignore what others tell us about our daydreams, we still know somewhere beyond what we can expressed literally that we could have done more. If we had only been more discerning when it came to what was injuring those daydreams in youth, we might have come a little closer to them as adults. But, perhaps, a new, better way will be revealed when we have reached the threshold of what our injured daydreams have amounted to.
The daydreamer’s dreams are a light at the end of the tunnel. For the daydreamer, it takes something else that is often beyond the expression of words to instill dedication into those dreams, because the daydreamer has a tendency to dream and is far too likely to assuage that dream to a world that sees normalcy as a priority against what we might have ultimately been directing ourselves at later in life. We should be careful not to diminish a child’s silly habit of tucking a basketball in to the covers at night because we cannot say for certain where a symbol of transformation will come from, nor the way it might reveal for ourselves or anyone else.
Footnotes:
- The story of the guru is a kind of fairy story Carl Jung relates in his book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious which I have reworded and expanded upon heavily for my purposes here. The original can be found starting on paragraph 233 of that book.
- The term “symbol of transformation” is also a book titled Symbols of Transformation by Carl Jung, though I have not read it. I have used the nomenclature in a way that is obviously inspired by Jung but I am unaware as to how close my usage is in similarity to his. I assume it is not far off but that was not my intention.
It does not seem to be a stretch of the imagination to say that a person who has the habit of taking their basketball with them so often that they bring it to bed at night is also the kind of person who is far more likely to accomplish the ambition tied to that dedication than the person who doesn’t.
