Alex Kajumulo, 3 Sept. 2011, in Edison, Washington. Cathy and I went to an opening reception at the Smith | Vallee Gallery where some of Cathy's artist friends were showing works. Alex was stopping by with a girl's soccer team that he coaches for everybody to have dinner after the tournament. A very small world. Sometimes I refer to Alex as a Tanzanian Zen master (although his training was as a Bushman).
My personal understandings of “spirituality” come from everyday activities.
In early 2005, I was playing recreational pick up soccer at the Queen Anne Bowl in Seattle. Since 1998, Queen Anne Bowl has been a gathering place for men and women who are international players, former professional players, college students, premier players and recreational players. We’ve had the MVP and some of her teammates join us from the Seattle Pacific University women’s team who were National Champions in their off-season. We get tourists and business visitors from around the world who hear about the place and show up.
Queen Anne Bowl is surrounded by beautiful plantings and trees and next to a park. I’ve taken time before, during and after games to observe the seasonal changes among the foliage. I remember one fall day when snow flurries came in from perfectly blue skies and puffy white clouds, while fall leaves blew around on the playing surface.
In 2005, as we were running up to the opposing goal, Alex, a former professional soccer player from Tanzania, yelled as he passed me the ball for a shot, “Don’t f__k it up Dan.” I had met Alex many years earlier when he first came to Seattle. I did not know him very well at that time in 2005.
Alex’s words immediately flooded my brain and I miss-kicked the ball.
Alex yelled, “Didn’t I tell you not to f__k it up?”
I responded: “Alex, I didn’t even think of f__king it up until you mentioned it.”
A number of other players around us who heard this exchange laughed.
Later after the post-game conversations, I sat in my car and thought about this exchange. I realized that once again my reaction was one based on perfectionism (fear) – when my voice says that that I can’t make mistakes, at that instant moment, I will make mistakes.
My next thoughts sitting in the car were memories of my own critical words to teammates when I was much younger and playing on competitive soccer teams, some of which I captained. Although some teammates seemed to thrive in such an atmosphere; others just quit. I did not see then how my words robbed some teammates of the joy of playing.
I also remembered playing board games such as Emperor of China, and how some friends would tell me that I was too intense and they wouldn’t play with me anymore.
Alex’s words that day in 2005 led to a resolution that I made sitting in my car that from that moment on, my purpose at Queen Anne Bowl was to bring joy into my playing and to do so with encouraging words, accepting the varied personalities of the many players, adding humor to defuse conflicts, and just enjoying the moment regardless of how often I may touch the ball. This decision led to becoming friends with a number of players. Alex and I became good friends since that exchange.
Eugene, a former professional player from Holland later told me that he had never met anyone who loved soccer the way I did. That was interesting to me – for I was learning that love comes out of how one acts, not out of comparisons and judgments and certainly not out of winning or losing.
That moment with Alex in 2005 is one of many examples in my own life that a teaching comes out of everyday activities. It brought to light for me another element of the spiritual destructiveness of perfectionism.
Perfectionism shackles the heart against forgiveness, acceptance, compassion and love. Such tension bleeds into the way that I have treated life and can do so again.
That resolution led me over the years to quietly talk to some very competitive players about being kind to beginners or those who are not as competitive as the best players at Queen Anne Bowl.
One beginner was a young man obviously out of shape. Three years ago, he told me that his job didn’t pay enough for him to join a health club and that he wanted to learn how to play and to get back into shape. One day he told me that others were making fun of him. I told him to persist and ignore those people – that such words reflected more the insecurities of the ones uttering them. I said that the heart of Queen Anne Bowl soccer has been to be open to all players.
Two days later, I heard another player yelling and making fun of mistakes made by this young man when he was trying to play goalie. I walked up to the yelling player and asked him to take a moment from the playing. He knew me from when he was in high school starting to go to Greenlake to play in some competitive pick-up games in the evenings. I quietly explained what I had learned about the younger man and how he felt hurt and shamed by such words. To his great credit, the man I told this stopped his verbal conduct and started being generally kinder in his words and actions. Since then, he too became a friend. (The newcomer played for several more months and then got a new job where he could not take the time off to show up at Queen Anne Bowl.)
Out of many experiences such as these, I’ve been learning to detect the earliest signs of any physical, mental or emotional agitation. Developing such awareness is like having the canary in a coal mine. Being unaware of such agitation leads to wishing for time to pass quicker, wanting to be anywhere else but where I am, being stuck in the quagmire of the past or attempting time-travel into a deluded future – in other words, to be generally dissatisfied.
In Buddhism, this state and similar states can be referred to as Dukkha (Pāli दुक्ख; Sanskrit दुःख). It is one of the Four Noble Truths.
The Buddha said:
“This, bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of Dukkha: Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, sickness is dukkha, death is dukkha. Presence of objects we loathed is dukkha; separation from what we love is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha.”
Dukkha shows up in many ways.
One day last summer in 2010, I had a thought that everything will be better and I can be happier once some personal health and economic uncertainties ended. I caught that thought and said to myself, “Dan, these uncertainties may go on for far longer than you want.”
I knew that this thought would lead to self-created suffering or Dukkha. It would shrink my universe into a tiny black hole sucking up all joy and emitting completely unnecessary anxieties, fears and other mental and bodily afflictions that would flourish and propagate into everything I touched if I stayed in the delusional belief that all I need for happiness is for this moment to pass. This too is Dukkha.
The wonderful effect of daily practice using spiritual tools (in my case, they include Buddhist mediations and mindfulness practices) is that the awareness of such a thought today is caught and released quickly, whereas at one time, I was completely unaware of such illusionary thoughts.
So in each day and every moment, teachings come from what I encounter. In each moment, I can choose joy or I can be buffeted around by whatever comes up internally or externally. When I am aware, I can make a decision to choose joy.
And I learn these lessons from relationships and interactions with other humans, other life forms and all that flows at any moment in life.
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