In times of stress on the golf course - say, after an errant tee shot or a woefully flubbed chip - all but the best golfers usually hit another bad shot.
Why?
Well, if they are anything like me, it is because they are flustered and stressed. They can't believe what they've just done. Out of the rough into the trap! What the hell is wrong with me?
That's right. After the stress comes the negative self-talk. Getting down on oneself. And for some, including good old Denny when I was younger, anger. Club throwing. Cursing. I've finally put that blow-off stuff behind me, but the stress and negative self-talk and resulting lack of focus cling to me like my shadow on a sunny day.
But the greatest thing about golf, other than those sporadic pars and rarer-than-a-compassionate-conservative birdies, is that it is the game that most accurately reflects our larger lives.
Most of the social difficulties we're struggling through as Seattle gets bigger, and bigger, are, like the second bad golf shot, due to stress, a lack of focus and the inability to think under pressure.
Consider road-rage incidents. There was one the other day on I-5 between Kent and Tacoma, seemingly the most common locale for freeway craziness between Portland and Bellingham. Two guys over 21 and under 51, with jobs, newish cars, probably nice-enough families - in other words, sorta normal lives - were involved.
Observers said that one fella cut off the other without yelling fore. Horns blew. Middle fingers came unsheathed. And then, stressed, angry and definitely not focused on the task at hand, the two men engaged in more than two miles of high-speed chicken on the freeway, endangering all kinds of folks, including themselves.
I'm sure, after arrests were made, which they were, and everybody calmed down, at least one (hopefully both) of these vehicular turkeys thought to himself, "What the hell is wrong with me? How could I lose it like that?"
Bad enough to cut someone off; worse to be the cutoffee. But a lot worse, a sandtrap after a shanked tee shot, and finally, a lost ball, followed.
Consider political arguments, a shriller and shriller part of the Amer-ican scene.
You just know that snarky co-worker who makes more money than you voted for the Evil One, Li'l Georgie.
You brood on it. Exactly like a bad shot on a previous hole. All the golfing instruction books tell you to forget the last shot and focus on the next one. Tiger Woods and other great golfers have said that the main difference, other than swing speed and accuracy off the tee, between amateurs and him and his fellow professionals, is the ability to forget and move on.
At work, you forget all the good things this poor deluded fella has done for ya. Or all the bad things he hasn't yet done to you. So when he says something, about old Blabby Karl Rove, or that demented useless bloodbath in Iraq, you're into the rough, sandtrap to follow.
And another enemy is born. Another new stressor at work. A lousy score on the job hole.
The truth is, most drivers who cut you off aren't doing it to you personally. They don't even know you. They don't know how bad your day's been. And they probably don't care. They are either angry, unfocused or stressed out. The proverbial "empty boat" the Buddha speaks of often in his ancient but still pertinent little homilies.
But once you respond as if it were a personal attack, instead of stepping away from your bad shot, or stepping on the brakes and letting this angry clod get far, far away from you, you're headed for one of life's sandtraps or even out-of-bounds areas. Your lack of focus or restraint coupled with his cloddishness has created what we hackers call a blow-up hole.
The political argument is the same thing. No man has ever talked a woman who didn't at least love him a little already into loving him a lot.
And no Seattle liberal (to take a page from some of my angrier correspondents) has ever yelled a cultural reactionary into agreement on anything important in the history of the Western world.
Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta and abortion-clinic bomber (and killer), said at his sentencing the other day, after his victims' relatives had their say, "I did it and I'd do it again."
The misguided co-worker is just another bad golf shot. Step away from the trouble. Slam on the conversational brakes. Focus on how to get through the next two minutes without making an unpleasant, uncomfortable situation worse. Stay out of the trap and maybe save par.
And then say thanks to the Scots for inventing the frustrating, rewarding game that most resembles the greater life off the links.[[In-content Ad]]
