How Life is Like Golf

I played golf yesterday and it was not pretty. Or, I should say, it was not pretty off the tee. I just couldn’t get the ball “out there” and frequently was in the woods to the left, which is unusual for me. When I played a copule of weeks ago in Florida, I was consistently hitting 200+ yard drives straight as an arrow right down the middle. The funny — or frustrating — thing is, yesterday my short irons were pretty good, and they usually are a problem for me. I hit several very nice, high, straight shots that landed softly on the green from around 115 yards.

So what does this have to do with real life? It seem so hard to get all the parts of the game working together. You make progress in one area only to regress in another. The goal of “putting it all together” to achieve your target score (at least for me) doesn’t ever seem to materialize.

And so it is (at least for me) with everything else in life. Progress in one aspect of work — in the old days, winning a case, or now, getting an article published — gets overshadowed by problems in other areas — bad results in a different case, mix-ups with the University administration, getting behind in lecture notes, a complaining student. Something positive in the spiritual life — a good stretch of consistent Bible study and intensive prayer, for example — is exploded by bouts of temper, lust, envy or anxiety. A quiet, harmonious day at home is interrupted by a silly argument. The game never seems to come together for that perfect score.

I know how to approach this: redefine success shot-by-shot; don’t think about the score; focus on each shot as it comes; put a bad shot behind you and try to make a better shot the next time. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matt. 6:34). Easy to say, hard to do.