How things should be

Yesterday I watched some basketball. I realized that one of the reasons why I stopped playing basketball is because I had a very clear picture in my mind of how basketball should be played, or better said, the kind of basketball I like to play. And it is mostly team play. But to get a team to play as a team, proper training is needed, because even if individuals are very good, it does not mean that they know how to play together. It also requires that the coach has the willingness to play this way and knows how to coach this team spirit.

The reality is that this rarely happens - it is difficult to achieve. The normality is to find a group of individuals that just play together where players either pass the ball, or do not pass the ball. No team plays.

But this is life. I had in my picture the perfect scenario, the one I lived as a youngster and I enjoyed the most. But this picture of perfection, of how things "should be", made me stop playing because I could not meet this or any other standards. I must quote again Matthew Dicks:

"They also tend to cling to their original vision, unable to see divergent paths and new opportunities. They have dreamed of a single thing for a long time, and as a result, they cannot reconfigure, reimagine, or pivot to something new. They can’t say yes to a new possibility because they remain locked on their original dream." - Someday is today, by Matthew DIcs.

Having a fixed vision in my mind of "how things should be" has stopped me from doing things. I stopped writing fiction because of this. I stopped playing basketball because of this. Who knows how many other things I did not even attempt because my vision of "how things should be" looked too daunting. By watching other people, especially by seeing artists do their job, I finally understood that mental images are just that: images, not reality. This realization is inner freedom.

Time to build a new reality.