I watch a lot of sports with my husband.
Early in our marriage, Lou and I talked about the things that would make our relationship better, and for Lou, watching his favorite sports with him really mattered. So I became a pretty solid college football fan (Go Rebs!), and, I also started watching a lot of golf with Lou. (Just for the record, I’ll also watch the finals of any sport — other than hockey, and that’s only because I don’t understand that sport very well, and, Lou is not a fan, so I’ve never needed to learn!)
But back to golf. When I first got into watching that sport with Lou, Tiger Woods was at the top of his game and was pretty much a foregone conclusion to win most of the big tournaments. And, if he didn’t win, he at least made every tournament more exciting to watch. But then, of course, Tiger had his huge fall from grace, and then he experienced a bunch of injuries, and it really did seem like Tiger was all washed up.
So to see him win the 2019 Masters Tournament after such a long dry spell was pretty exciting!
As a constant underdog in my own life, I live for a big over-comer story, and Tiger’s win-against-all-odds story was epic! When he was on the last hole, even though I was watching well after I knew that Tiger won the tournament (Lou and I watch everything on delay), I still felt my heart rate go up just before that little white ball dropped into the 18th hole! Yesssss!! And then when he hugged his cute little son? Oh my gosh. Then I just felt all weepy and emotional for him.
Anyway.
The week after The Masters, every sports-related show Lou watches was non-stop talk about Tiger and comparing his comeback to every other great athlete and sports legend in America. It got kind of boring after the first couple of shows I watched with Lou, but then there was this one debate between two of my favorite talking heads (Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon on Pardon The Interruption) about Tiger’s future. The crux of the debate was if the guys would bet on Tiger winning another major tournament this season, and for me, their debate pretty much boiled down to this:
Do you want Tiger to win another major, or do you full-on believe he will?
I found myself drifting off during that segment into my own non-Tiger related thoughts, and I wondered which is better: hope or faith. I spend a lot of my time in life flexing one of these two spiritual muscles to keep myself from falling to pieces! My hope muscle gives me a reason to keep trying, but my faith muscle gives me the courage and strength to pick my head up after one of my many hopes for myself doesn’t work out. (Clearly, something is getting lost in the middle…)
At the moment, I’m in one of those complicated ditches of wonder in my life, and so this thought process is pretty useful to me. I’m the kind of person who seems to grow “pregnant” with possibilities all the time, yet something happens after all of my “labor” that alters — and in some cases, ruins — the possibilities I was hoping for… So then I have to unwind all of the hopes I had and figure out if I still believe.
Eventually, I seem to always come back to the conclusion that I simply can’t do anything but believe…which makes me feel like my faith matters more than my hopes. But when I was thinking about the way people were talking about Tiger, I really started to wonder about how others really see me. I have a lot of people in my inner circle who have supported me and invested a lot of their hopes in me over the years. And whenever I set out to do something, I know they’re rooting for me to make something happen this time.
But inevitably, the wheels fall off for some reason, and one thing leads to another, and nothing ever comes of my latest effort, and I find myself a little more drained, but still oddly hopeful.
Not too long ago, I had lunch with a very connected and powerful friend of Lou’s (and mine, of course). This man is the kind of man who makes you believe in whatever he’s doing — not just hope his ideas are sound. And even though I know he’s had dozens of setbacks and failures in his storied career, he does seem to know exactly how to course-correct so he can keep going. And in a way, he’s the kind of guy you bet on to win every time.
For a very brief moment in time, this man stepped into my career and offered me a bit of mentoring, and, he even created a few connections for me. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand that what this man said to me at that lunch is valid to me, and in my eyes, he’s entitled to have an opinion about how I move through life as an author. But here’s what he said:
“Sonja, you are one of the most talented people I know, but you’re also a big chicken. You don’t go for things, yet out of every person sitting around this table, you probably have the most likelihood of success if you’d just get out of your own way. But you probably won’t, and we will all still love you and hope you’ll figure things out. But it’s just hard to watch someone like you stay sidelined because of yourself when you really should be in the game.”
Let me just say that it felt like this guy slapped me across the face with his words — and, I could feel my cheeks redden with a complex mix of shame and flattery in what felt like a back-handed compliment and a schooling all wrapped into one! So at first, I felt a bit stunned by his directness, and then I felt a defensiveness rising up in my belly. But no words came out.
Because I think I knew on some level, he was right about me.
It’s been a couple of months since that lunch, and so I’ve tried to unpack that outsider’s view of me in my own very internalized way for quite a while now. Some days, I feel inspired by those taunting words, and other days, I feel confused by them. I’m always so well aware of how many things in life are out of our control, and I think I’ve learned how to surrender a lot of “control” in my life by exclusively fixating on my hopes and my faith. But maybe I’ve gone too far in my understanding of things, and I’ve relinquished too much control. Maybe that’s my latest lesson.
Oh boy. Another babbling post from yours truly! Sorry about that… I’ve never been the Tiger Woods of my world as an author, so comparing myself to him in any way is kind of silly. But there is some good fodder in the mix of my thoughts about what it takes to be a champion of any kind, and what it takes to move away from living and dying in hope, while still believing there is a greater purpose in my life.
No one is really waiting for my “comeback” except for me. I’ve been close to success in my mind dozens of times, so I do sense that I have something in me that’s worth all the effort. But my world easily bounces between two incredible strength in my being — my hope and my faith — but there’s an entire space in between that I sense is mine for the taking.
So in my mind, I’m suited up, and I’m not on the sidelines. I’ve made the cut because I deserve to be here, and today, there are 18 holes of possibility right in front of me. So now I’m wondering this:
