Purpose

Here's a piece I wrote for a Gryphon team that was having some perspective issues. Perhaps you may find something of value here.

Every part of basketball has a point. Every drill, every step, every move, every angle has a reason for being. Of course the analogies to our lives abound here so I won’t belabour the obvious. There is an underlying force that guides each moment… a purpose. A life without regret can only be had by keeping in mind what we are aiming for. “What is my purpose now?’ This question is not to be confused with the ever popular “What do I feel like doing?” The profound difference between the answers to these two questions can be most enlightening.

We live in a society where “How do you feel?” is the most commonly asked question, as if our emotions were //the// most important thing in existence. This emphasis is more than a bit odd when you consider that feelings are fleeting and temporal and definitely not the most prudent basis for our actions.

Having a purpose suggests a moral agenda… the right thing to be doing. There’s conscious intent, a mind to goals, a focus. When you lose that intent of purpose you lose your direction. Mistakes are made in the heat of competition not because of ill intent… but due to lack of intent. Certainly, emotions have an important role to play in the sporting arena, or any other arena for that matter. However, when emotions are the primary motivator the true purpose often becomes lost. How often does a player pick up a dumb foul after the ball has been stolen from them or they have experienced some other personal slight? It can probably be safe to say that the player at no time believed that their purpose was to engage in a fundamentally unsound defensive practice in hopes of picking up a costly foul that would be detrimental to the success of the team.

The purpose of any particular player changes rapidly in the course of pursuing the higher purpose of the team. Staying focused on the purpose of the moment; boxing out, sound defense, setting a screen, is an extremely difficult task in the rapid pace of a game. This focus is made doubly difficult due to the question that our culture has given us as a guide; “What do I feel like doing?” Of course you feel like slapping the person who just blocked your shot. However, by overriding that programmed question with “What is my purpose now?” you can take an action that is not as detrimental to the overall success of the team. Like any form of new activity this kind of personal questioning has to be practiced intensely in order to bring it into play. “What is my purpose now?”

The nature of winning is that the odds of it occurring increase when everyone on the team is working to the best of their ability to achieve their purpose of the moment. However, once again the “What do I feel like doing?” question rears its ugly head to work against this principle. In any team sport, deep down inside, every player wants to be the best player on the team. It is that drive that makes a great athlete. The grim reality is that most players don’t find themselves doing exactly what they feel like doing in the course of competition. No one wants to sit on the bench, be injured or play only spot duty in certain situations. At any given time there is a vast number of equally important answers to “What is my purpose now?”…“I have to make this foul shot”, “I have to keep my feet moving and not get beat”, “I need to sit here and let my teammates know with all of my being that we’re all in this together”. A team can only truly achieve greatness when each individual asks themselves the right question, arrives at the correct answer for any given situation and then puts all of themselves into making that answer a reality. It is through this singularity of purpose that championships are won. “What is my purpose now?” …One more time.