Seek Sunlight

Here We Are Again At The Twilight

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Over the course of the last few years, I've written something each week. Consistency was my one goal when I set out and boy have I stuck to that because my quality of writing has ebbed and flowed dramatically. If you've read much of my writing you'll know they're not all winners.

Every once in a while I find myself too busy, or that I tried and failed to write a big essay, or got too distracted, or was feeling too much to really write something concrete. It's become my "reflection" series:

• Touch Some Grass

• Back To The Grass

• Taking a Breath

• Guide Your Gaze

• Pondering The Grass

Today is one of those days. I would describe it as one of the "feeling too much" variety. But its left me reflecting on a video that I'm sure a lot of you saw. I'm not a big golf guy, but I immediately became a huge Scottie Scheffler fan. In it, he reflected on how, despite being the number one golfer in the world, it doesn't fulfill him.

It is one of the greatest monologues I’ve seen in a long time. And you had better believe I will be reflecting on it again in a much longer essay. Some of my favorite parts:

"I'm not here to inspire somebody else to be the best player in the world, because what's the point, you know? This is not a fulfilling life. It's... it's fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of, like, the deepest, you know, places of your heart. You know, there's a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and then you get there and all of a sudden you get to number one in the world, and they're like, "What's the point?" And, you know...

I... I really do believe that, because, you know, what is the point? You're like, "What? Why do I want to win this tournament so bad?" That's something that I wrestle with on a daily basis. Because if I win, it's going to be awesome for about 2 minutes, and then we're going to get to the next week, and it's going to be like, "Hey, you won two majors this year. How important is it for you to win the FedEx Cup Playoffs?" And it's just like... we're... we're back here again, you know?

I love being able to play this game for a living. It's... it's one of the greatest joys of my life. But does it fill the deepest, you know, wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not. You know, that's why I talk about family being my priority—because it really is. You know, I'm blessed to be able to come out here and play golf. But if my golf ever started affecting my home life, or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife or with my son, you know, that's going to be the last day that I play out here for a living."

I saw people online talking about how every high-performance person feels this way. But... I'm not sure that's true. Dozens of exceptional people have prioritized their craft over everything else. Their health, family, sanity, morality. For many the pursuit of greatness was a worthy enough cause to sacrifice everything else.

I was talking to my father-in-law about the video and his thought was "he can talk like that because he's already made it but the guys who are still working for it can't." But even if the guys striving do feel that way, they couldn’t say anything like this.

That led me to another quote that I often return to from Groucho Marx: "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member."

There are also people who are striving who are not the greatest in the world and will say things like "I don't want to be the greatest in the world; it's not fulfilling to me." And people would guffaw and say, "well, nobody is asking you because you're not the greatest." But you should be able to make that reflection. The danger is it can give you an out to quit when you could persevere. But you should be able and even encouraged to reflect on what is fulfilling; not just dogmatically pursue for the sake of pursuit.

As I take a moment to reflect this morning I think the takeaway is that no professional accomplishment can fulfill you. They can be rewarding, they can support you financially, there is nothing wrong with them.

But as I've been reading about in The Courage To Be Disliked, most, if not all, of the problems we deal with in life are interpersonal problems. When we struggle it is often because we are living our lives inauthentically based on what we think others would want us to do or expect us to do. And so we feel stuck.

But days like today are for me to reflect on that reality. What does it mean to live authentically? To Scheffler's credit, he most certainly seems like he's living authentically. He's prioritizing things because they are the things that will matter in the long term, not the things that he is pursuing professionally.

That merits some soul-searching every few months from each of us.

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