Basketball, Part 2

Part One

There are certain transformative moments in life when you realize, for the first time, the shallowness of your previous understanding of a particular word. Though the moment passes, your understanding and appreciation for this word is forever deepened.

I vividly recall a moment -- an otherwise perfectly mundane, forgettable moment, standing at a bus stop, idly conversing with a friend -- when I looked up at the sky and, for the first time, saw how blue it was. In that moment, I felt my life break into two distinct periods. There was the pre-sky period, during which I had had an incomplete picture of what "blue" meant, and there was the post-sky period, during which I had finally completed that picture. For some reason, in that moment, the unbelievable, extraordinary blueness of the sky sank deep into my mind, and every other blue looked less blue by comparison. It was so memorable that I wrote about it.

I had a similar experience with the word "flight". As a student of physics, I had a vague understanding of the equations governing lift, gravity, fluid density; I was already amazed at the incredible pace of human flight (from Wright Brother paper skeletons on a beach to landing on the moon within a single human lifetime); I had even been on planes before. But one time, taking off from LaGuardia, I truly felt what it meant to fly, lighter than air, head in the clouds, gravity's bane, borne aloft on thin aluminum wings, piercing that exquisite blue sky. I wrote about that too.

These moments are often accompanied by pure, intense emotion, and have indelibly changed the way I perceive the world, as well as how I act within it. They are major underpinnings of my character, my personality, my very being. Tonight, I experienced one of them. The word was mercy.

I grew up in an abusive household, and I'm starting to realize how I've never really experienced mercy before. What I experienced was more like a sequence of brief reprieves, staccato calms-before-the-storm during which I tried desperately to keep my head down, doing my best to delay the inevitable hurricane-to-come -- and come it would, with no hint of compassion within its howling winds, no trace of mercy in the coldness.

Then again, mercy was not something I especially wanted. The thing I wanted was revenge. I didn't want to be free of suffering; I wanted to act, to punish, to inflict suffering on someone else, to show them what I was made of, to bring my ill-conceived notion of justice into the world, a notion of justice that had nothing but contempt for the word mercy. I'm reminded of a quote from James Baldwin's seminal civil rights publication, The Fire Next Time:

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

But hate is not an antidote to pain; it is an amplifier. My lashing out caused me nothing but suffering. To make matters even more confusing, the person I lashed out at responded with nothing but love. It was one of the biggest emotional shifts I've ever experienced -- so big, in fact, that it gave me a better appreciation for what the word love means. I've written about this before -- but even though the experience left me with a better grasp on love, I still had no grasp whatsoever on mercy. That changed tonight, as we got mercy-ruled out of an intramural basketball game.

From the first minute of the game, it was clear our opponents belonged in a different league to the people we played last week, who themselves already belonged in a different league from us. I want to make it clear that the league my team signed up for was the lowest-skilled, least-competitive league possible, ideally suited for people still learning the basics of that mysterious "hand-eye coordination" skill people seem weirdly jazzed about. The opposing team, by contrast, were routinely firing off behind-the-back no-look passes, slamming home effortlessly-coordinated alley-oops, swishing perfect-follow-through three-pointers under pressure, finding nothing but net.

When we were down 0-20, I started to wonder if we were ever going to score. When we finally do, I clap. It's a wretched, miserable clap, a clap that rings hollow with pathetic enthusiasm and woeful futility. It's the most our team celebrates for the entire game -- slaughter, if you prefer more accurate terminology.

My teammates start talking about how the other team are assholes because they are trying too hard, making fun of us, laughing at us. I don't agree with this assessment; if anything, I find our opponents to be surprisingly respectful and understanding. They are doing nothing but trying their best -- if anything, it would be more disrespectful to not try as hard, because it would ruin the spirit of competition. And I would interpret their laughter (which I never even personally witnessed) as an uncontrollable reaction to the obvious disparities being displayed on the court. It's hard not to laugh at the ridiculous, the extreme. It's even harder not to laugh at the extremely ridiculous, which are some of the candidate words I would use to describe this basketball game.

But losing poisons everything. It's almost impossible to keep a positive attitude when you're getting totally annihilated on the court, so it's natural to interpret the opponent's actions as more aggressive and disrespectful while not considering how bored and disappointed they might feel playing a non-game. It's just as natural to get quieter, to try less hard, to adopt a loser's mindset. And the cycle continues.

Our team's morale is in the gutter well before halftime. This lack of spirit is expressed in our silences, our "oh well" glances, our "whatever" eyerolls, but is most painfully manifest in my increasingly sad claps on the rare occasion our Star Player scores. The other team starts feeling bad for us, so they start trying less hard, which in turn makes me feel even worse. They are just standing there, halfheartedly waving their arms around, not even trying to block. The refs give us a totally bullshit foul call that results in one point from a free throw. Their pity nets us a double-digit score.

Then again, pity was not something I especially wanted. The thing I wanted was to win. I didn't want to be tossed some scraps under the table; I wanted to act, to practice, to get good, to punish everyone for their pity, to show them what I was made of, to enact grim revenge on them for their clearly well-intentioned actions. I had nothing but contempt for their pity, and nothing but frustration for myself, because I didn't have anything near what it would have taken to achieve these goals. I'm reminded of a Mike Tyson quote:

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

To me, that quote says that all the adversity I've experienced -- abuse, weakness, getting blown the fuck out at an intramural basketball game -- matters far less than how I choose to react to that adversity. I didn't react particularly well in this situation. I found it impossible to stay motivated, to not become demoralized -- and these reactions manifested on the court, as I started pressuring opponents less, walking instead of running, looking too often at the clock, wondering when it would be over, when we would finally lose.

I consider myself an optimist. I consider myself a competitor. I consider myself a person who tries hard to do things he's committed to doing. As the game went on, I considered myself to be less of these things, and more like someone treading water, clinging to the driftwood of these once-proud aspects of my identity, trying not to drown in my own mediocrity. Less than ten minutes into the second half, it finally happens: we are down by 50 points, which is when the mercy rule kicks in and the game ends -- not with a bang, but with a whimper.

It was in this moment that I finally understood the meaning of "mercy". Mercy, at its core, is about liberation. It is a compassionate liberation of a person's dignity from the all-encompassing quagmire of hopelessness. The healing process must start here to be effective. Agency is the beating heart of the restorative process, and mercy is its carrier. Mercy is not noble or pretty; it is pragmatic. It is not the knight in shining armor, come to slay the dragon. It is the browning, punctured life preserver thrown out to the drowning person who is clinging to driftwood, treading water.