The Athlete Way

I’m not going to be the hero you read about in books. I’m not that type of hero. I am a weaver. I weave seemingly random moments into a tapestry of words that come together to form a message that connects the outwardly disparate, distinct threads of my life. I merge bold obnoxious hues of green, red, and orange, with soft pastels of pink, yellow, purple, and blue. That is my craft, my gift. I connect things, subtly, invisibly, patiently, into an intelligible whole. The other day I went to community mediation with a friend. The teacher spoke of the Zen Buddhist tradition of koans, and I came to understand them as being a bit like Jesus’ parables, paradoxical anecdotes used to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning to arouse enlightenment. I left the meditation with the sense that my gift, like my life, was remarkably similar to this notion of koans. It doesn’t make sense. It’s an answerless riddle, whose truth, invisible to the eye, is discernable only to the heart. ...