Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose.

We just finished watching season one of Friday Night Lights, a really great series about the culture of high school football in small-town Texas.

Right here, right now I need to think like I’m playing high school football in Texas, where they make moments of greatness out of playing your heart out on a football field, and where it matters if you give your all.

I’ve never had an experience like that, but now, I need to make it happen here, on my own. Right here, right now, I decide what I’m bringing to this game, and whether or not I can set aside all my bunk and move and fight and play and WIN.

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can’t Lose.

I don’t think it’s all about winning, but I'm seeing it is about the same thing that you have to do when you go after a win--the all-out, suck-it-up, shove-everything-aside-for-the-moment focus and drive. In my day-after-day life I don’t know how to win, I don’t naturally see life that way. But I need to start figuring out how to see it that way, so I can win here, so that my life is not about running just for the exercise, practicing for more practice. When does the exercise ever pay off? Sure, in the day-to-day quality of life, but can’t it be for something else too? For something more? I mean I do that discipline thing physically, running yet knowing I’m not going to win any races, so in this, my writing life, can I shoot for, expect it to pay off bigger?

It has to at some point. Practice, discipline, writing exercise, whatever you want to call it, the lifestyle of exercise and hitting it hard every day here has to pay off, in some way more than just in the quality of the everyday. My life cannot be just about the process and the exercise forever--the treadmill effect. Writing everyday looks and feels great, but am I getting anywhere?

At some point, it all needs to come together for a game, a moment, a time where I have to rise to the occasion and freaking DO MY THING. Get it out there, live, love, dance, run, play, write. Be engaged in every way and just do it.

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose.

When is, what is, how is that going to be me? I’ve felt it many times, that it was time to show up and play, but I was nowhere near a game. Now I’ve been here, on the practice field and it’s time to show up for a damn game and just damn play--to love the game and just play it. I know there’s a great feeling there, even though I’ve not had it—-that’s what makes me cry when I see it. I know it’s true, and I know it’s great and freeing, and I want to be out there on the field, run my heart out, play the game, do my thing. I’ve never gotten to do my thing, and do it well--haven’t had a thing. Haven’t ever had it all click and work and come together. I have done plenty of things that weren’t completely me and done them well enough, but I haven’t done my thing, been me and just played my heart out and won. Done it all and left it all on the field? Naw.

To do that I’d have to get out of my own head and my own dysfunction and just run, PLAY--not just be. I actually know how to do that, just be. A lot of people don’t. I know how to be fine just being, I don’t have to be doing something, don’t have to be in the arena, I enjoy very much observing the game—I’m very comfortable in my own skin doing that. But now...

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can’t Lose.

Can’t lose because clear eyes and a full heart are all you need. All you need to play, do your thing. That is winning.

I’m in a difficult place. I don’t know how to take any more steps from here. I’m not playing with abandon—-running, scoring, loving the moment and working my ass off—-I don’t know how to do that. I’m still practicing, running laps, preparing for something I don’t know will ever come and something I don’t know how to get to...I don’t even know how to get there.

So, right now I’m tempted to back off this drill, but I bet this is the place where the real work might actually get done. I’ve got to dig in, push that sled across the field with all I’ve got. Push, pull--practice with more than I’ve got--with so much that I’ll be crushed and disappointed if I don’t win, don’t play well,or if I never get to play. Crushed and disappointed--not looking forward to that.

Here I am trying, practicing, working, getting in shape for a game I don’t know, and I don’t know what is going to be required of me. I don’t like that, I like to know what is required of me, and what it’s going to cost before I even think about playing. But I’m here now, already, and, well, I’ve got to keep going, I have a lot of practice time in already. I need to love it though. I need to love this game to play it freely and live it and have it be mine and me and to ever hope to get in the zone, to ever hope to have a great game.

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can’t Lose.

I’ve had that underlying feeling of dysfunction every time I’ve tried to do anything I didn’t have wired, didn’t know I could do, was perhaps above me. Nothing was supposed to ever be above me, it was all going to be cake. So, when I have to put up and not instantly get it right—I start to feel dysfunctional. I get that hollow feeling, the undermining insecurity, doubt, regret...all that. I know it well. That’s why I’ve taught school, aerobics, why I work in a coffee/wine shop. Teach me to do something and it’s already beneath me. Show me a formula—no problem. It’s this other stuff—LIFE—where there is no instructor and no manual, that’s where I get dysfunctional, unconfident and paralyzed. Not that much in life does it to me anymore, I probably choose from things that won’t make me feel that way, won’t require things of me I don’t already know how to give.

That’s why this. That’s why writing, that’s why the incredible difficulty here, and the impossible way forward. It’s the decision to let something matter so much that if I survive it, let alone succeed in it, what an incredible thing I will learn...to make something a priority, to work on it and practice, then shove everything aside to pull it all out and play and fight and work through it all and leave it all on the field.

I don’t know how to do that...but I’m going to figure it out.

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can’t Lose.