Bagger Vance Wisdom

"Junah had finally stopped thinking and playing golf."

You know you got a good movie when each time you watch it--you enjoy it more than the last time, you catch some new insight, and it sticks with you.  You gotta good movie in The Legend of Bagger Vance.  So what was the turning point in the movie for Junah aka Matt Damon?  The narrator, the grown up Harley the caddy is Jack Lemon, and he says--"Junah had finally stopped thinking and playing golf."  The turning point?  To be at one with the game...to be the game, stand inside it.  Once you start thinking about it, you step out of and reflect on it.  

Talk to those people who have attained greatness in any field.  You will hear the same thing.  They stop thinking and become one with whatever they are doing.  They become an extension of it.  

What about us?  The only way that happens is if we practice...whatever we are about--how do we enter it through our values, how does it ignite our passions--like the sail on a boat, how do we offer ourselves and allow the wind to blow where it will?  Yesterday's post offered a powerful poem by Antonio Machado.  The heart has not gone to sleep, the poet writes, but it is "listening/on the rim of vast silence."    That's when we stop analyzing life and living it--"listening on the rim of vast silence."

 No, my heart is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
Not asleep, not dreaming—
its eyes are opened wide
watching distant signals, listening
on the rim of vast silence.