I recently finished reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. (I’ve had a little more time for reading with the internet problems I mentioned in my last post. Things seem to be pretty good right now – we’ll see how long it holds.) The book is about a guy on a walking mission in England, nothing about golf, but I was struck by a line near the end.

“If we can’t be open, Maureen thought, if we can’t accept what we don’t know, there really is no hope.” (Maureen is Harold Fry’s wife.) It struck me that Maureen’s attitude applies to many aspects of life, golf included.

I know that my life as it is now has little in common with the life I thought I was preparing myself for in graduate school, or even for most of my career. If I had spent all my time trying to force things into that planned mold, I don’t think I’d be nearly as happy as I am now. I might even be dead. When I gave up and accepted where things were going even though I wasn’t sure where they were going to, things worked better for me.

I certainly don’t know where my next golf shot is going, or how the round is going to turn out. But I do know that fighting where it’s going and moaning about it after it happens only does two things. It makes my swing get stiff and choppy as I try to control an uncontrollable ball and it wrecks my enjoyment of the round. My head starts to jerk, I hang on and don’t release, and awful things happen.

Getting to admitting that I don’t know where that ball will go, feeling OK with that, and committing to hitting it with all my might can be tough.

I wonder if Maureen would like to make a little money as a caddy?

(Photo of Utopia, Texas golf course by Charles Prokop)