Imagine the ball as a person, the flippers are their emotions and the trigger is controlled by somebody on the outside who is playing with the machine. The machine is switched on and the game begins, the ball and the flipper collide and the ball gets catapulted around the machine. It could be a happy event, somebody telling me how wonderful one of my pieces of work is ..... bulls eye, the ball has hit a double point target the machine goes wild 'ding ding ding ding', lights flash and it notches up the points.
It could be a disappointment, my work was not accepted by a magazine......... the ball shoots around the machine and ends up too far left and drops out of the game. No points, game over, you are useless. I eat to give myself a good emotion. HAHAHAHA (insert evil laugh) who says I am not in charge of my emotions!
I think it is obvious that one should not let ones emotions be controlled from the outside. I also belief that many of our actions are driven consciously or unconsciously by the need to feel some degree of control over our lives. Where there is a gap between the two, we will find ways to compensate: eating, not eating, shopping, drinking, gambling, denial, guilt trips, abusive self talk........... Many self-help gurus talk about finding balance but I am a passionate, impulsive person and I like that about myself. I do not want to be a middle of the road person sitting on fences. So I went on this thought trip:
I download and listen to some shows from Hayhouse radio to learn and widen my horizon. There I heard Dr. Wayne Dyer talk about the Tao de Ching and I went off to read it. The beginning of the second verse of the Tao de Ching has stuck in my mind ever since:
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Somehow that fits in with my post about John Wooden's philosophy. In our society winning a basketball game is good, therefore losing it is bad. The outcome of the game seems to define the teams and players but that is not telling the whole story. In contrast I watched the figure skating World Championships in March and realised they had completely changed their judging system from a 10 out of 10 'judges hold paddles up' system to an intricate computerised points system where judges and specialists look at every aspect of the skate and the result is a much wider range of points. It makes it fairer for the skaters but what really impressed me was that now they prominently displayed each skaters seasonal best score for the audience to compare with their score on the day. If I remember rightly, the silver metal winner in the men's competition was quite a bit below his own season's best. But there were scores of skaters in the minor places who had risen to the occasion and surpassed their own best scores by miles.
What would life be like if I only competed with my own personal best? Could I keep my passion and my impulses and my many other quirks that make up MOI and still find balance and peace of mind?
I feel some Kaizen coming on.....................................................
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