I need to play basketball

I realized this weekend that it’s important for me to play basketball.

Saturday was one of the worst basketball days of my life. I scored zero points. I was a liability on defense. I lost every game I played in. While I was there, this one team won every game they played except one – the one game for which I played on their team (subbing for Young). Just a terrible day for me all around.

I was so frustrated when I came home that I pulled out my guitar and played for a while. I just needed to sooth my soul by doing something I was good at. So I played for a while contemplating whether I’ll ever play basketball again.

Anyway, not a big realization, but yeah, I just realized that’s this attitude is kind of indicative of more in my life. Almost everything I do is what is easy for me. Or something I’m good at. So I play music a lot (most recently the recorder – I must have played the Titanic song intro about 1000 times in the past week) because it’s easy for me and I’m good at it. And other things.

I think it extends to other parts of my life, including spiritual. Like, I dunno, I tend to hang out with the people it’s easy for me to hang out with. Which is natural and everything; it’s just not particularly… Christian I guess is the right word. Or like spiritually, I’m real good at from time to time doing intellectual exercises, like doing super in depth studies or researching a random theological topic. Just because, that’s easy for me, I’m kind of intellectually inclined. But the parts that matter more, that are hard for me, like consistency, or loving people, or mercy and grace, all that stuff – it’s hard and I don’t do it.

I dunno, I suppose it’s natural and whatever, I just don’t think it’s good for me. I could spend all my time doing things that come easy for me and are good things, like music, hanging out with people (that are easy to hang out with), doing random intellectual Bible studies. All of those are good things I think I’ve been doing. I just think I’ve been deceiving myself into thinking I’ve been doing enough just because I’ve been doing a lot. But I’ve been avoiding everything hard and as such I think my spiritual life has been incomplete.

So yeah, I think I need to play basketball. Not because it’s important in itself; it’s more what it symbolizes. I suck at it so if I stick with it even though it’s hard hopefully it will translate into sticking with other things I suck at in my life that I need to do.

But yeah, it’s pretty humbling. It’s just depressing when Young Lee is better than you at something. That just hurts.