On Walking Your Own Talk
Is it worth preaching what you yourself strive to live?
Should I talk the talk of the walk I aspire to walk?
How can I define and articulate things I believe to be true about life when I myself sometimes fail to adhere to those very truths? Is this hypocrisy?
My mind wanders to the image of an athlete. A professional does not exclusively consider themselves to be a professional athlete when they perform perfectly.
An NBA athlete remains an athlete through the missed shots. They are not an athlete solely when they succeed.
Perhaps an athlete is even more so an athlete as a product of the missed shots. Missed shots mean shots attempted. As a prolific thought leader once said:
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Wayne Gretzky”
— Michael Scott
An athlete cannot be an athlete without shot attempts. Therefore, an athlete must be neither the shots made nor missed but rather the shots attempted.
As a longtime motorcyclist told me when I first began riding:
“There are only two types of riders, those who’ve gone down and those who are going down.”
There is no perfect record. By all accounts, and therefore all we have on which to operate, perfection is not attainable. An athlete cannot hit every shot. A fighter cannot land every punch. A motorcyclist cannot win every race.
Therefore, to be something must mean to be all aspects of that thing. An athlete is both the missed and made shots. Indeed, perhaps an athlete is fundamentally the attempt.
There is an analogy in the Christian Bible about non-believers being tossed back and forth in the waves of the world and maintaining no progressive course or firm foundation from which to proceed.
“…we will no longer be immature like children, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching…”
— Ephesians 4:14a
An athlete must believe in themselves through both the missed and made shots in order to be an athlete. They must maintain a foundation, their belief in what they stand for, being an athlete, to avoid being tossed back and forth by the waves of both their failures (a missed shot) and their detractors (those who do not believe what the athlete believes).
Only then can an athlete truly be.
I must take a stand and believe in something in order to be. An athlete is not an athlete as a product of a single decision. Rather, a multitude of decisions comprises an athlete.
Every success and every failure requires a decision of the would-be athlete. To be throughout many different circumstances, rising and falling tides, one must make decisions that establish an arc of consistency. An athlete is only an athlete in that they remain as such in a consistent arc throughout the rising and falling tides of the many circumstances that make up their life.
I will talk the talk of the walk I strive to walk and when I stray from the path forward when I miss my shots, I will remain true to those things for which I have taken a stand.
I will accept the fact that missed shots are an equal element in what constitutes what it means to choose to be something.
I will fight for that arc of consistency that cuts through the rise and fall of the many tides of life and constitutes what it means to be.