It occurs to me…

A Golfing Observation

I read an article recently on Cameron Triangle, a PGA golfer, generated by his recent third place finish in the Valspar Championship.  His 13 under 271 in that tournament netted him a check for $407,100.  But there was more. 

It seems that Triangle holds the record for most PGA earnings without ever winning a PGA tournament.  Since turning pro in 2009, in 298 starts, while he has no wins to his credit he has one second place finish, two ties for second, has been in the top three finishers six times, and has twenty-six top ten tournament finishes.  He has a low PGA tour round of 62.  He is currently 89^th in the world golf rankings, and 149^th on the all-time money list, having earned $13,743,938 as a PGA golfer.

So there it is, Cameron Triangle has never won a PGA golf tournament, nor have I.  In that respect, and I am fairly confident saying in only that respect, he and I have something in common when it comes to our golf games.  But what came to the forefront of my mind in mulling over this is how fickle, how elusive, how slippery, how deceptive that world “success” is.

Photo taken recently, Galveston Harbor

Photo of “silverman,” a full time resident of our place in Galveston.

Photo taken on a recent walk.

This from Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart:

“The paradox:

All experience strips us of much except our sheer strength of mind, of spirit.

All experience reveals that upon these we must not fully depend.

Brooding over us and about us, even in the shadows of the paradox, there is something more –

There is strength beyond our strength, giving strength to our strength.

Whether we bow our knee before an altar or

Spend our days in the delusions of our significance,

The unalterable picture remains the same;

Sometimes in the stillness of the quiet, if we listen,

We can hear the whisper of the heart

Giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.”

Photo taken of a shell-looking, reflective sculpture on the University of Texas campus near the Dell Medical Center. the red blotches are my running shorts.

Pointed by readings today in DeMello’s Awareness, I arrive at the slapping the forehead, the “I coulda had a V8” moment.

“Wisdom occurs when you drop the barriers you have erected through your concepts and conditioning.”

“If the heart is unobstructed, the result is love.”

So much time/effort in life is spent building, adding, filling in, yet many, perhaps most of the significant moments in life occur when we tear down, deconstruct, subtract, and/or remove and create (actually, recreate) a space for wisdom and love to settle in.

“Perspective” is a word that keeps coming to mind lately.  It is a complex word, one with lots of alternative meanings in any dictionary, some short and straightforward (“a mental view”), others longer, more complex (“the capacity to view things in their true relations and relative importance” or “the appearance to the eye of objects in respect to their relative distance and position”). Seemingly inherent in all the definitions is that there is no single perspective.  Somehow, what came to mind this morning was the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 11:15-32.  Same events, same facts, but oh my! – different perspectives as between the younger son, the older son, and the father.

Photo taken recently in Galveston.

Rereading one of my favorite books, Richard Ford’s Canada, and renewing my admiration for his writing.  This exchange between the main character (age 15, and in my top 5 book characters), Dell Parsons, and Mildred Remlinger:

“How do you know what’s really happening to you?”

“Oh, you never do…..  There are two kinds of people in the world…, well, really, there are lots of kinds.  But at least two are the people who understand you don’t ever know; then there’s the ones who think you always do.  I’m in the former group.  It’s safer.”

It occurs to me that I vacillate between the two groups – which in itself explains a lot.